Gettysburg (58 page)

Warren himself had lent what help he could to Hazlett’s gunners as they wrestled their tubes and carriages into place. Now, spying a Fifth Corps column passing toward Rose’s wheat field from the northern side of Little Round Top, he did not give it a second thought: he rode down the hill to intercept those troops.

There were times in battle when a commander required plain luck. George Meade’s luck was riding high at this moment as one of his ablest subordinates, in search of desperately needed reinforcements, encountered a brigade that he had once commanded. The man now in charge of it, Brigadier General Stephen H. Weed, had ridden ahead to find out where his regiments were to go. Warren recognized the rider heading the column as Colonel Patrick O’Rorke, of the 140th New York. More luck: Warren knew him.

“Paddy, give me a regiment,” Warren said.

O’Rorke hesitated. He was supposed to be guiding the brigade forward until Weed provided other instructions, and he told Warren as much. “Never mind that,” Warren interjected. “Bring your regiment up here and I will take the responsibility.” That was enough for O’Rorke, an Irish-born West Point graduate described by one observer as “a man of noble character.” Directing that the rest of the brigade continue on its course toward the wheat field, O’Rorke led the 140th up Little Round Top.

At first, Philippe Regis de Trobriand had done the impossible, by maintaining a position at the wheat field in the center of the line held by David Birney’s division. It had helped that the main thrust of the first Rebel wave had been focused on Devil’s Den and Big and Little Round Top, and that reinforcements had been forthcoming in the form of two brigades from James Barnes’ Fifth Corps division. But it had hurt that he had had to release some of his regiments to assist other sectors, and that some of the Georgia regiments belonging to G. T. Anderson’s and George Benning’s brigades had targeted Rose’s wheat field. Still, de Trobriand’s mixed force of Third and Fifth Corps units had stubbornly held its own, at least until the right wing of Joseph Kershaw’s South Carolina brigade rammed into the stony hill that rose on the wheat field’s western side.

As Kershaw remembered it, his men “advanced into a piece of wood beyond the ravine and to the top of a rocky knoll … and thus became heavily engaged.” Their commander at once recognized the value of his objective, as it comprised “a point from which I could distinctly see the
movement of troops in the wheat field.” The pendulum of luck now took a swing in Lee’s direction, for Kershaw was able to capture this important position with minimum resistance from the two brigades of Barnes’ division. While Barnes himself would never satisfactorily explain why he had ordered his men off the stony hill, the move may have had to do with the threat posed by Kershaw’s right wing, as well as a concern that the artillery line along the Wheatfield Road was in need of support. The lapse underscored another failing of Sickles’ scheme: the lack of planning and coordination left a number of operational questions regarding tactical responsibility unresolved, leading to a confusion of authority that was made the more acute by the mixing of the different commands.

With the stony hill in Kershaw’s hands, the few Third Corps units that remained in Rose’s wheat field had to fall back midway across it to support the battery located there. Disaster seemed unavoidable unless help was on its way. Luck swung back to George Meade: help
was
on its way.

Taut as an arrow ready for flight, William Barksdale’s Mississippi brigade was aimed at Sherfy’s peach orchard, ready to go. The unit’s fiery commander, a former U.S. congressman and champion of states’ rights, sensed victory, though he knew it would take courage and maximum determination to secure it. Barksdale had both of those qualities in ample measure; his men, however, were rather more phlegmatic. “Some strolled down to the little stream in their rear, where canteens were filled,” recalled one waiting soldier. “Others crossed over and broke off great branches from the numerous cherry trees which were in full bearing.”

A few minutes earlier, before joining Kershaw near the Emmitsburg Road, James Longstreet had spoken with Barksdale. “I wish you would let me go in, General,” the brigadier had pleaded, pointing east, toward the Federal cannon that were firing on his men. “I would take that battery in five minutes.” Longstreet shook his head as he left to meet Kershaw. “Wait a little,” he called out. “We are all going in presently.”

A crisis loomed on Little Round Top. Pressure was building against the extreme left of the Union position, where the 15th Alabama and the 20th Maine were locked in a desperate struggle. While continuing to press the Federal line facing Big Round Top, William Oates was doggedly shifting strength against the thinned, refused left flank, knowing intuitively that a
success at this point would mean victory at every other. Joshua Chamberlain had no difficulty gleaning his opponent’s intent, but doing something about it was a different matter altogether. He tried moving his two right companies over to assist the left, but the effort created more confusion than he had anticipated, so he countermanded his order. They would have to hold with what they had. “The two lines met and broke and mingled in the shock,” Chamberlain remembered. “The crash of musketry gave way to cuts and thrusts, grapplings and wrestlings.”

The situation was even more desperate on Vincent’s right flank, where the 16th Michigan held the critical position. These troops and the regiments to their left had already beaten back several assaults undertaken by the 4th Alabama and the 4th and 5th Texas. It spoke volumes about the fierce resiliency of these Southern units—worn as they were from long marches, lacking water, and already under fire for more than an hour—that they regrouped for another try. This time they had help from the 48th Alabama, one of the two regiments from Law’s Brigade that had helped force entry into Plum Run Gorge.

The sight that met the Confederates as they left the cover of the woods around lower Big Round Top was enough to quail the most stalwart soul. To the daunting height of the Federal position was added the grim necessity of passage through a kill zone already littered with the dead, dying, and wounded casualties of the previous efforts. It proved to be too much for portions of the 5th Texas. “We forwarded without a murmur, until we struck the danger point,” related Private William A. Fletcher. “The men about faced near as if ordered and marched back. The command ‘Halt!’ was not heeded.” Enough nonetheless remained in these and other ranks to make it seem to the equally weary Federals that a human wave was about to break over them.

Command and control collapsed suddenly in the 16th Michigan. Some would later surmise that an order intended to tighten the defense had set off a chain of events that nearly ended in catastrophe. Perhaps in an effort to better control the maneuver, or out of a misunderstanding as to its context, a subordinate officer without authority ordered the regimental colors to the rear, which resulted in nearly a third of the 16th’s falling back. The regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Norval E. Welch, was evidently quite overwhelmed by these events; he assumed that a general retreat had been ordered and proceeded to lead the one-third contingent off the hill. To the sweaty, powder-smeared Texas and Alabama soldiers scrambling up the rugged southwestern slope of Little Round Top, it looked as if the entire Yankee line were giving way.

The Federal unit to the left of the 16th, the 44 th New York, shifted some of its fire to the right. The danger drew the brigade commander, Strong Vincent, to the scene. According to a soldier on the hill, “Throwing himself in the breach he rallied his men, but gave up his own life.” Mortally wounded by a rifle ball in his groin, Vincent was carried to the rear. “‘This is the fourth or fifth time they have shot at me,’” he gasped, “‘and they have hit me at last.’” Command devolved to James C. Rice of the 44th New York, who kept his nerve, impressing everyone who saw him with his determination to stay on Little Round Top.

All the courage in the world would not fill the empty space to the right of the reduced 16th Michigan, now being filled by squads of Rebels. Help did arrive, however, in the form of the 140th New York. The 526 Empire State men huffed up the hill and deployed in a line of battle split more or less into two wings. A soldier in the ranks recollected, “Our
Generals did not take the precaution to have our men load before we came into the contest, and so we were delayed a few moments in loading.” Gouverneur K. Warren mistook their stopping to load for a halt preparatory to straightening their formation. “No time now, Paddy, for alignment,” Warren shouted at O’Rorke. “Take your men immediately into action.”

The 140th crested Little Round Top just to the right of the 16th Michigan. Seeing the confusion in the Yankee ranks, O’Rorke charged forward, followed by two companies from the 140th’s right wing. “Here they are men,” O’Rorke yelled. “Commence firing.” The order ignited a fusillade from both sides, in the course of which O’Rorke fell with a mortal throat wound. The 140th had the initiative now. More and more men piled into a sloppy line, firing as fast as they could reload. Their dramatic appearance breathed renewed life into the other Union regiments on the hill, which now picked up their firing rates. It was all too much for the Alabama and Texas men, who began falling back. One embittered Texan in the 5th noted that the Federal position would have been “impossible to take had the enemy only been armed with rocks.”

Timely Federal reinforcements were also reaching Rose’s wheat field, where the abrupt departure of the two Fifth Corps brigades had allowed Kershaw’s South Carolinians to secure the stony hill. Kershaw was well aware that his command was not in the best of shape and that he needed help, but the only lines of battle he saw approaching were Yankee ones.

These troops belonged to Caldwell’s division of Hancock’s Second Corps, which, due to the urgency of the situation, was being committed piecemeal, a brigade at a time. Hurried as they were, the brigades were also entering the fray inside out—that is, oriented in the wrong direction—which meant that key individuals had to pass through shifting files to properly guide the combat advance. A member of the 148th Pennsylvania spoke for many in the brigade when he insisted that “this eccentricity of formation … did not, in the slightest manner, affect the conduct of our regiment. Previous drill and discipline had provided [for] just such condition.”

The first to arrive was Edward E. Cross’ First Brigade, which angled across the eastern edge of the wheat field to strike at a ragged battle line in the woods to the southwest. The Federals’ objective was made up largely of “Tige” Anderson’s Georgians, with a few of Jerome
Robertson’s Texans and even some of Kershaw’s South Carolinians mingled in. Cross’ men levered the right end of the Confederate line back a bit but ran out of offensive punch before they achieved any breakthrough. During this combat, their leader fell, gut-shot. He was carried off to a field hospital, knowing his wound was mortal. “‘I think the boys will miss me,’” Cross said before he died. “‘Say goodbye to all.’”

The next wave of Federals into the wheat field had been the last brigade in Caldwell’s column as it wriggled across the landscape to this trouble spot. Daniel Sickles had sent his aides out to pull in all the reinforcements they could find, regardless of where they were headed. Time and again, units were intercepted by Third Corps aides who quickly got them marching in directions having little to do with their orders. Following this pattern, one of Sickles’ staff had met the head of Caldwell’s trailing brigade and voiced the usual urgings for its commander to follow him. Taking these for official orders, Samuel K. Zook swung his brigade out past the next pair in line, deployed near the Trostle farm, and advanced against Kershaw’s men on the stony hill.

Fighting from the better cover afforded by the boulders and trees, Kershaw’s men staggered Zook’s brigade to a halt, mortally wounding Zook in the process. Kershaw’s troubles were far from over, though, for another Federal battle line soon hove into view, this one heading toward his exposed right flank, which was nestled on the edge of an unoccupied ravine. The new threat came from Patrick Kelly’s Irish Brigade. Watching it approach, a South Carolina officer was impressed. “Is that not a magnificent sight?” he remarked to a companion.

Kelly’s men battered their way into the ravine, then scrambled up its side to close with the enemy. “The Confederates were on a crest while the regimental line was below them, their feet about on a level with the heads of the men,” recalled a Pennsylvania officer. “When the Regiment charged and gained the ground on which the enemy stood, it was found covered with their dead, nearly every one of them being hit in the head or upper part of the body.” A South Carolina officer remembered that the fighting here was “so desperate I took two shots with my pistol at men scarcely thirty steps from me.”

Kershaw looked back for his support, Semmes’ Georgia brigade, which was not yet engaged. As Semmes began rousing his men for the advance, he took a serious thigh wound that would eventually kill him. His men provided enough stiffening to halt the Irish Brigade but not enough to drive it back. A surly stalemate had fallen over Rose’s wheat field.