Program Information

In early July 1863, the contending forces of Union and Confederate converged on the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. It was Gen. Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North. On the far left of the Union line was a strategically located hillock known as Little Round Top. If Lee's troops could take and hold that hill, he might roll up the Union line and carry the day. On July 1st, alert Union cavalry units began to gather and blocked his path thus starting the decisive three-day battle that would decide the Civil War.

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Transcript

Lead: For 400 years service men and women have fought to carve out and defend freedom and the civilization we know as America. This series on A Moment in Time is devoted to the memory of those warriors, whose sacrifice gave, in the words of Lincoln at Gettysburg, the last full measure.

Content: In early July 1863 the contending forces of Union and Confederate converged on the small Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg. It was Gen. Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North. He was trying to get between the Army of the Potomac and city Washington and bring the war to an end. On July 1st alert Union cavalry units began to gather and blocked his path thus starting the decisive three-day battle that would decide the Civil War.

On the far left of the Union line was a strategically located hillock known as Little Round Top. If Lee's troops could take and hold that hill, he might roll up the Union line and carry the day. In what would later appear to be a comedy of errors, both sides spent the better part of July 2 trying to get people up to the top of that little hill. Perhaps the decisive moment at Gettysburg came in the afternoon when finally Union troops secured the top of Little Round Top and elements of the 15th and 47th Alabama regiments tried to push them off.

On the far left of the far left was the freshly reinforced 358-man 20th Maine Regiment led by Joshua Chamberlain, a cultured, soft-spoken professor of modern languages at Bowdoin College who had discovered his inner warrior in the previous year since volunteering.

At least three times the rebels charged up the hill trying to dislodge Chamberlain's unit, at times getting to within 10 feet in vicious hand-to-hand combat. Once his center began to break and give ground, but Color Sgt. Andrew J. Tozier, holding the flag, refused to budge despite the fact that bullets were buzzing in the air around him. At that point, with the ammunition almost exhausted, Chamberlain, in a move that almost everyone, including himself, recognized as intuitive, ordered his men to fix their bayonets. In the heat of battle, with their blood up, the 20th Maine then began to charge down the hill into the Alabama regiments.

Whether Chamberlain ordered the counter-attack or not is disputed and probably will be forever lost in the fog of war. He did not lead the attack since he had been lightly wounded twice, but he certainly inspired it. At one point the Confederates try to make a stand but gunfire from behind a stone wall broke their will. They panicked and fled.

With Little Round Top in Union hands, the stage was set for the dramatic events of the third day and Lee's withdrawal following the disaster of Pickett's charge. The high water mark of the Confederacy had come and gone, on Little Round Top.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

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