Gen. G. K. Warren, Meade’s Chief of Engineers, having assisted Sickles
in placing his line, now rode to the crest of Little Round Top and found
the hill, “the key to the Union position,” unoccupied except by a signal
station. Warren was informed by the signalmen that they believed
Confederate troops lay concealed on the wooded ridge a mile to the west.
Smith’s New York battery, emplaced at Devil’s Den, immediately was
ordered to fire a shot into these woods. The missile, crashing through
the trees, caused a sudden stir of the Confederates “which by the gleam
of the reflected sunlight on their bayonets, revealed their long lines
outflanking the position.” Warren realized Longstreet would strike first
at Little Round Top and he observed, too, the difficulty of shifting
Sickles’ position from Devil’s Den to the hill.
[Illustration: _The Wheatfield as it appeared in 1890. Little Round
Top is in the background._ (Tipton photograph.)]
At this moment Warren noticed the approach of Union troops from the
north and rode to meet them. They were Vincent’s and Weed’s brigades,
leading Sykes’ corps from reserve position to the front. Intercepting
these troops, Warren rushed them to Little Round Top. Law’s Alabama
troops were starting to scale the south slope of the hill when Vincent’s
men rushed to the attack. Weed’s brigade, following closely, drove over
the crest and engaged Robertson’s Texans on the west slope. The arrival
of Hazlett’s battery on the summit of the hill is thus described by an
eyewitness: “The passage of the six guns through the roadless woods and
amongst the rocks was marvelous. Under ordinary circumstances it would
have been considered an impossible feat, but the eagerness of the men
... brought them without delay to the very summit, where they went
immediately into battle.” A desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Weed
and Hazlett were killed, and Vincent was mortally wounded—all young
soldiers of great promise.
The struggle at Little Round Top now became stalemated, and Longstreet
directed his entire line to attack. The Confederate drive was taken up
in turn by the brigades of Benning, Anderson, Kershaw, Semmes,
Barksdale, Wofford, Wilcox, Perry, and Wright against the divisions of
Birney and Humphreys in the Wheatfield, the Peach Orchard, and along the
Emmitsburg Road. Four hours of desperate fighting broke the Peach
Orchard salient, an angle in the Union line which was struck from the
south and the west. It left the Wheatfield strewn with dead and wounded,
and the base of Little Round Top a shambles. Sickles’ men had been
driven back, and Longstreet was now in possession of the west slope of
Big Round Top, of Devil’s Den, and the Peach Orchard. Little Round Top,
that commanding landmark from which Longstreet had hoped to shell the
Union lines on Cemetery Ridge and Cemetery Hill, still remained in Union
possession.