The Assault on Little Round Top at Gettysburg: Gettysburg 158 Live!

hey everybody gary edelman american battlefield trust i'm not quite worn out yet this is gettysburg 158 we got chris white behind the camera and we're going around the battlefield really trying to focus more on people and units of the civil war we're trying to get down to the enlisted man i think you've seen us doing that already we're going to try to do it more but something else that we're gonna do and that we're doing is we become cognizant this is our fifth anniversary video set going back to gettysburg 154 and you know we've started to realize where we've gone and where we haven't so we pulled out the order of battle and a map of the battlefield we're trying to go to places we haven't gone yet if you don't see us going to your favorite place look for gettysburg 154 55 56 57 and i think there's a good chance that we'll have covered that already but we are on the north extremity of little round top this is sedgwick avenue uh going off to the north here as the wheat field road crosses it uh in 18 in the 1880s and 1890s there was a huge park around here called round top park there was a roller rink there were two places to eat there were two photo studios there was a casino could you imagine that casino at gettysburg what a bad idea there was a sort of a semi brothel here for a while there was a huge fight as to whether gettysburg would be a historic shrine or a giant amusement park so um this is a place where you know really the future of gettysburg was in part decided and eventually of course the historic site won over at least for the most part okay but we're not here to talk so much about that i want to talk about some of the people in units over here so here we are on the north side of little round top i guess we must be right near the 83rd pennsylvania monument or the 20th maine's monument no in fact we're not even near the monument of any fifth corps soldiers in fact you're going to see a couple of markers here to 12th core soldiers hmm for those who follow the battle you know we all really know that it's the fifth core that comes over here but before the fifth core is ever here some elements two regiments of geary's brigade the fifth ohio a marker here and 147th pennsylvania who i think you're going to see um in a video that will post about copes hill you know later this evening here so the fifth ohio is formed around cincinnati um this is a unit i think with a scottish colonel i think his name is holiday maybe before the end of this video chris will break out his legendary scottish accent um but i will not be doing mine now but um you know this this this john holiday actually was morally wounded in 1864 uh you know at new hope church in the atlanta campaign and what you're going to find is that a lot of the officers fought on little round top while this was not the most costly place these units ended up being in the thick of it in 1864 so i think you're going to constantly see some of this 147th pa by the way is from philadelphia lieutenant colonel ario j pardee who will later fight around copesville and get a field named after him par d field um is this particular unit here these guys are here on july 1 1863 before the third corps is out before the fifth corps is out general mead and you know hancock and howard were concerned for the union left it's really interesting that if you're going to send soldiers out to little round top it didn't have that name yet you know are you really just guarding the wheat field road is that why those markers are here or wouldn't you have pushed a little bit up so you'd have a better view now a lot of these woods weren't here and they probably had a pretty good view um but it's pretty interesting thing to contemplate none of us really know exactly where the 147th pa in the fifth ohio were um you know but the veterans came back and put their monuments there uh maybe some of the troops up here who actually did all the fighting up here didn't want other monuments competing you know with them so pretty interesting thing about this my invitation and that the battle and the positions on little round top they were here for all three days of the battle not just on july 2nd and third now one other thing i'm going to show you and we're going to cross the road and we're not going to really see it actually so we don't have to cross the road but if we were to cross the road and it weren't so thick in there i could take you to a an artillery brigade plaque okay that is martin's brigade of artillery and um that's the fifth core artillery bead actually we can see it check it out um so there's actually a little view right up to it over there and let me see if i can find a picture without too much uh drama or trouble uh i'm not sure if chris has it there it looks like he's looking for it i can see it we know each other's machinations let's see who finds it first i'm almost there here we go here it is if you want it chris so here are veterans um of martin's you know in the 1913 reunion standing there but if you were to look you could see a rock on the background and that rock is actually right over there okay so something's going on well what we now know is that the avenues up a little round top when cars were going like 11 miles an hour they were curved everywhere there was no reason to make them straight and then when cars started going as fast as this car is oh my god 20 26 miles an hour um they straightened out all the curves and that means that this road used to go on the other side of that monument and therefore when you go on to the road here is the modern photo for this on the bottom here so this is the same view you see what they did they turned the monument so that people from this road might have some chance of seeing it but when they turned it it swiveled on its base but they didn't move the base so it's cockeyed uh that's one of the little nerd things about little round top and about all historic sites you can go out and learn a little bit more about how the battlefield is actually changing we're walking up the northern slope of little round top where most people don't go and we're about to come to some of the other units you don't really think about that's right sixth core soldiers on little round top artillery on little round top that isn't just from a u.s battery uh specifically i'm talking about the 121st new york's monument you're going to see up here the 98th pennsylvania up here and gibbs's battery and even another monument that's not even here anymore the fifth main battery the fifth main monument which has been moved since so this was an interesting part of little round top in fact when you used to come visit little round top in the 18 uh 90s or so the road only went to part way up the hill so everybody saw these monuments first check this out now chris is looking here at the 121st pennsylvania 121st new york a sixth core unit that didn't fight so much on little round top they're colonel emery upton famous for a couple of things uh of course developing sort of a novel attack and leading it uh near the mural shoe in spotsylvania and there he is right here and then of course for his suicide at the presidio in san francisco look at our california video series that we actually did a few years back here um what uh but you know while he was here you know because you can see the view from here even though we're on the lower slopes it's a great view on little round top um on july 4th the day after the battle of gettysburg he said he watched pickett's charge from here and said lee's attack was inspiring and sublime for about 10 minutes it seemed that the weight of a hair would have turned the scales of the battle um you know a lot of people who were up here you know wrote about watching pickets charge most of them wrote about their own experience but they talked about this grand spectacle and i think that's one of the reasons why i think it's charged is probably the most famous attack in american history you could see it near population centers it was grand maybe as far north as the confederates got sort of depending on how you counter at least as far far north as they fought let's continue on here you're with the american battlefield trust we're on the north slope of little round top we're going to make our way to the crest to the better ways to the better known parts of the hill and we'll talk about the fighting of course but our focus is going to be upon people and units now why are these sixth core units here the sixth core was the reserve for the army and they freed up the previous reserve the fifth corps okay but when the sixth corps arrive and that is uh the 121st new york the first brigade to arrive was actually nevin's brigade of wheaton's division of the sixth corps wheaton's a new division commander because his division commander a guy named newton was placed in command of double days division um or of the first corps i'm sorry when when doubleday didn't exactly have the trust you know of the overall high command here at gettysburg the first one to arrive on the hill seems to have been the 98th pennsylvania in the van of nevins brigade here at gettysburg he got detached from the other ones so the rest of the brigade is over north of the wheatfield road and these guys john b kohler um german guy went and charged down this hill uh one of the soldiers a guy named stiles i think it wasn't harry but i think it was henry styles if memory serves me right was actually charging down the hill and he got shot in the head uh you know by some artillery rounds or something like that or by a bullet i can't remember and they took him to the hospital he survived and they extracted the metal from his head along with 17 different pieces of his skull i read that in his pension record so i mean that was his charge down this way when he's charging this is after the famous fight for little round top this is when the u.s regulars had already charged out and fallen back and the 98th pa charge sort of in ahead of and along with crawford's division when the pennsylvania reserves charge down here a little bit later in the day probably 7 30 p.m a solid hour hour and a half after most of the fighting for little round top now we're going to walk only a little ways we're not going to go all the way out there but you can see a very little visited place this is called gibbs's ledge just to orient you we're looking towards devil's den we're on the north side of little round top we started off uh looking at a a hill called mud showers knoll today just below it would have been swishers hill so if you come over top of big round top you'd have the largest hill then you come to little round top munch hours knoll then swishers hill and this was key on july 1st because one of the reasons the 12th core comes up here is kind of is a fallback position henry slocum doesn't know what he's getting into and he kind of spreads the 12th core out all over the place and some of the units are here some are up at powers hill somewhere over on the baltimore pike some end up on benners hill for a little while um as a timely diversion and then the six core is doing the same thing the next day they're going to be plugging the gaps where needs to be and the 121st new york uh upton's regulars commanded by emory upton is one of uh many uh officers from the west point war class of may and june of 1861 to fight up here on little round top or at least hold a position here on little round top on july second and 3rd and you know and emery upton's not the only one to meet a sad end long after the civil war during the civil war you're going to have the commander of the 98th who's actually if you look now at the front of their monument you can see the uh blue greek cross remember the core badges and the greek crosses the sixth core are color coded red white blue green first second third fourth division so you already know that that's a third division of the sixth core without even reading anything on the monument john b kohler will be killed the following year i need to look at my cheat sheet again he's killed at cedar creek again another officer who is going to be you know disabled or worse as a result of some of the fighting here now gibbs's battery is actually uh formed at the same camp camp denison at cincinnati as the fifth ohio so you've got sort of people knowing each other and fighting right near each other gibbs and for all that this is called gibbs ledge he's only got two or three guns on this ledge and he's going to put the other guns on the north side of the wheat field road now i say two or three it could be even four people argue about this where were his guns how many did he have where but we do know that he straddled um the wheatfield road that's one of the few wartime roads in this area all the other avenues such as crawford avenue there or sykes avenue we were just walking on in warren avenue on the other side there and sickles avenue all those are things that were built for us for visitors to be able to visit and see the battlefield a little bit better so gibbs is going to have some good service up here and when the remember there's the battle for little round top and then the u.s regulars two different brigades one under strength especially is going to charge across this ground toward the wheat field and the wheat field is just beyond that next set of trees those trees are on the top of houcks ridge and the wheat field is just beyond it there they're going to meet a disaster in the wheat field and some of gibbs's cannoneers are waiting waiting for the regulars to come back so that they can shoot at the confederates coming toward them okay um you know at this point the southerners are flushed with victory this is maybe 6 37 7 15 p.m before the pennsylvania reserves are here and the confederates are actually pushing through the wheat field this is the weekend remnants of kirchhoff sam's anderson and the last week wofford here and this is their last push they're going to attack little round top from this side but supposedly it looked kind of like a wave on a beach just pushing forward a little bit more and then back it didn't have much punch to it then the pennsylvania reserves arrived and everywhere the confederates came the union just seemed to have mountains of reinforcements and that's the story of the battle of gettysburg wherever the southerners were gaining or had a chance to gain the interior lines the superior numbers and if you ask me general mead using his interior lines well to shift troops back and forth and a little luck really just won the day in almost every case you know for the union thus confederates made rather few permanent gains at gettysburg and they would later lose all of those um the following day um so now we're going to double back exceedingly rough terrain will prevent us from walking from gibbs ledge to the next place that we want to go and i think as we're walking up the hill let's set the stage a little bit for the battle of little round top so um i think you know some of this it's july 2nd the fighting hasn't started yet and you know there's going to be a political general up here that didn't go to west point you've heard of him his name is dan sickles and um uh chris maybe you want to talk about him and warren what's the high command going on here you want me to grab the camera real quick oh we're good i was trying to find a picture uh so dan sickles uh he is a great guy to read about if you don't want to believe anything someone says dan sickles is a tammany hall politician which is a political machine in new york city he's a democrat and he is going to get his general star based off of the fact that he has political connections and then he is going to kind of kiss up to the last commander a guy named joe hooker mr fj hooker as robert e lee calls him you know let's get chris on camera here if he's going to be talking so uh sickles will end up uh in charge of the third core technically third quarter was supposed to go to oliver rodis howard who's in charge of the 11th corps because he outranked dan sickles and he throws a big temper tantrum howard does he gets 11th core that's another part of the battle we'll talk about now with sickles he's going to command at chancellorsville he loses a little bit more than 4 500 men at the battle of chancellorsville and he's really going to be weakened coming here to gettysburg because not only does he lose men in battle he's also going to lose men to um uh two enlistments expiring he's about ten thousand men he decides because he had to give up high ground at chancellorsville he wasn't gonna do that here he pushes out and he's going to put up a line um out along the emmitsburg road he's going to jut it back through the wheat field now the peach orchard remember these places aren't named yet we don't know them just yet and then eventually it'll terminate at the base of little round top about 800 yards from where we are now when george gordon mead the union army commander just in charge of the army for a few days goes out front he's aghast at what he sees and by the time he realizes what happens it's far too late and now mead is gonna have to start sending troops out towards where we are luckily he had troops like the fifth corps who were on who were here the fifth corps were his former unit need was a core commander prior to this battle but then me his core was weakened on the way to gettysburg due to enlistments expiring so he's going to pick up some troops called the pennsylvania reserves along the way guys he had commanded in 1861 um sorry 1862 and now we'll have the fifth quarter starting to arrive here and that wheat field road is a perfect way to start shifting troops onto the battlefield so we'll have the fifth course start marching down that wheat field road and then atop this hill we'll have a 33 year old new york general named governor kimball warren who will come up here look out over this landscape and say man this is a really bad thing not to have troops up here at the same time he notices there's a fight that's going to start taking place down in devil's den artillery pieces will be lined up to face towards the south most people think we're facing towards the west towards ah the wheat field in the big valley of death no the union is going to have to set up facing towards the south to extend sickle's line and the confederates using exterior lines will have to wrap rap rap and finally wrap around that union flank trying to ever find it that union left flank and we'll have john uh john bell hood start initiating his assault and then eventually lafayette mcclause but this will become one of the culminating points for at least a portion of the fifth corps as well as some of the third core troops who will be down in the valley below trying to connect with these troops up here cool thanks chris so um just to talk about some of the terrain here the original road up here actually made a hairpin turn right there it was pretty sharp and it actually came here so you're on the original road to devil to a little round top excuse me habit and this was actually a turn around here so you this was as far as you would come and look what you would see standing above all you'd have this beautiful view your first real view of little round top from a higher elevation and you'd see uh the 155th pennsylvania lieutenant colonel i believe herman cain uh they are organized where is that chris pittsburgh pennsylvania pittsburgh pennsylvania and uh john herron kane is up here along with 146 new york whose monument you might be able to see over there and if we went up a little bit further we'd see the 91st pennsylvania these are three regiments you don't hear about but these are the regiments of weeds brigade that you don't hear about there's another one you hear about the 140th new york because they come in at the nick of the moment they're the first ones there and they really help to save the day these other guys get up here they take position here they perform valuable service but they're not in the thickest of the fighting and by the way two of the three colonels of these uh or commanders of these units will be uh mortally wounded or out of service within a year as well again showing how intense the the how things how real things got for the men of the fifth and the sixth corps and i think the commanders are just an example i think the same or worse could be said of the enlisted men of the foot soldiers that are here now one reason i wanted to have you uh have us come out here actually is to show some of this so first of all not only did you always have this great view um but here's what this monument used to look like in fact if we line it up here you can see that this is what 15 this is what you know you could build with privately raised funds you can see the maltese cross and everything like that they'd always hope to improve it and then in 1887 after this was put up the pennsylvania legislature awarded fifteen hundred dollars to every regiment that fought here from pennsylvania and they were able to add the zoo of uh crystal correct me if i'm wrong they weren't dressed as zouaves here but they were by the following year is that correct that's correct good good thanks chris is much better on uniforms and many other things than i am so you know this was this interesting thing and you can already see kind of a carriage visiting this section and when the war department came in in 1895 after the monument had been improved suddenly you have a full-on road here and you have a retaining wall there with a fence and everything like that you can see this cool old car i'll let some of you all you know figure out uh what year that might be or something like that and of course you can see the full monument here look at the view we enjoy a similar view to this today to this day okay so there was a road here for real now if we look over these same areas of this road you will notice that there are a lot of rocks in the way and whatnot because when you want to get rid of a road or a trail you place brush you put logs there and then you indiscriminately drop rocks along this road went like this and then it curved along where we're actually going to walk next and went up the hill toward little round top here anything you want to add here ma'am oh this is actually one of the best views if a little round top is very busy come down to the lower northern slope and you can get a beautiful view from the top up here you can see down to what looks like the taj mahal and that's the pennsylvania monument looking up cemetery ridge and it'll give you an idea of just how impressive big round top is then down to little round top and then to the two lower hills of swishers and munch hours null so you can see how if you're a confederate and you get up to this point you can feel pretty good about yourselves but the problem is you have to get to this point and there's some men from maine new york michigan pennsylvania they're going to be up here trying to stop these uh rebels from getting up here good thanks chris and we're not going to go quite all the way up to it because we'll have to backtrack but if you look at the 146th monument that's a kenner gerard actually who commanded the brigade after other changes are taking place in the fifth court on the side of it it would say from this position general mead actually uh observed the battle more specifically in the rocky pen that's right behind it there's a place where you can stand in perfect security behind big boulders and mead and sedgwick and warren and uh pleasanton and crawford and sykes were all there in the same place right after pickett's charge i mean no rest for the weary the union repelled the attack and within an hour or so general mead by 5 pm has ordered general crawford to clear the woods out here so again this is after the fighting for little round top after the pickets after pickett's charge there's still more happening the confederates are still in those woods and around the wheat field there so the pennsylvania reserves and a few others move out the confederates had already begun to pull back but there is a sharp fight in the wheat field maybe we'll talk about that on one of our next videos here um as the reserves try to clear out some of benning's georgians who are actually uh you know positioned in and around there so if you want to stand right in the footsteps of mead or if you're a sedgwick or a pleasanton i don't meet too many pleasanton fans as a matter of fact but he did look cool um you know or uh warren or sedgwick or whoever else are crawford um go ahead and stand in the rocky pen right behind there and be careful if you're gonna do it yeah just to add on cedric's our sixth core commander alfred pleasanton's our our horse chief he's our our cavalry commander for the union samuel wiley crawford he had witnessed the civil war start at fort sumter and he's commanding a division here at gettysburg and governor k warren's the chief topographical engineer of the army good and you know remember you've got henry warner slocum who was derided as not being too fast as slow come and you've got tardy george sykes i mean these nicknames could be brutal and sometimes they were right on the money i don't know how you feel about those chris absolutely their friends knew them the best just like they know us today and uh they're gonna give them some great nicknames over the years um you know so as we're making our way through here this is a little bit of a jungle but it is great if you have the opportunity to walk down some of these paths on northern uh little round top we're on the northern slope uh the main battle took place on the southern slope today we call that vincent spur obviously we called that uh vincent spur on july 2nd 1863 it's named after 26 year old eerie native eerie pennsylvania native strong vincent who's in charge of the third brigade first division of the fifth army corps let's pause for a second to talk about him now by the way we are on the original uh sykes avenue so this thing was making hairpin turns and all over the all over the place and what i want to say is that you know i mean we weigh this stuff um all the time you know uh we have to weigh preservation and restoration and protection of the resource you know when they built these roads make no mistake the roads might be 15 feet wide but you have to you know grade the land on both sides you know and what not so at what point should visitor access you know be more important than the protection of the resource obviously what's why would you preserve the land if nobody can get to it or have to walk 10 miles to get to it so you know weighing that the trust does this all the time and we appreciate you members who support our restoration efforts you know opening up a place to the public has a whole different set of things on your battlefield so keep in mind the park service still struggles with this as do all battlefield stewards now let's walk a little bit further away from the group so we don't disrupt them at all um it is the anniversary and there are people at gettysburg and whatnot you know it's not here the brood 10 cicadas or brute ex cicadas you might see which were here in profusion for the last month and now they're safe they seem to be gone so as we're gonna sort of flank the position to avoid um the group what i would say is uh chris and maybe i'll grab the camera from you here um you know how did vincent come to be at this place was he ordered here did he do it on his own i think that's a question that's still not completely answered by history uh strong vincent who's in charge of a brigade for the first time in a battle is going to arrive here on little round or in the vicinity of little round top uh you know near 5 to 5 30 in the evening of july 2nd as he arrives out into this area there are a couple stories you know one says that that colonel or sorry general barnes his division commander is going to send word to vincent to send him up here there's another story where vincent is going to stop an aide saying what are your orders give me your orders and that that person will randall mckenzie will tell him what to do and then up the hill will come strong vincent regardless it seems like um strong vincent is going to find his way up here and he's going to come up here first strong vince is 26 years old he is a harvard graduate he is not a trained military man but he said the day before the battle of gettysburg that would it would be to paraphrase an honor to die for his country on the soil of pennsylvania um so strong vincent when he comes up here he'll be the one of the first officers on a little round top now there was a signal station set up right about where you can see this group standing there we're trying to be a little bit quiet to be respectful the signal station's been up here throughout the afternoon of july 2nd and they've watched james longstreet's column about 14 000 confederates start to make their way towards us longstreet tries to do this in secret but he pops up over top of a hill and boom he's in full sight of these guys so now these wig wag flags go back and forth signals go up and down the line and now we start to see governor kimball warren arrive here 33 years 33 years old west point graduate of the class of 1850 governor kimball warren will arrive up here and start surveying the situation we talked a little bit about him earlier but he is the chief topographical engineer of the army beautiful artist if you ever read any of his if you look at any of his drawings terrible handwriting ironically in the midst of this campaign on june 17th as joe hooker's army's trying to make it up to him to pennsylvania or figure out where robert e lee's going he goes off to baltimore and gets married to a lady named emily welsh who had been the sweetheart of ap hill so if you ever read governor kimball warren's letters they're just like us he's like hey guess what i did the ap hill today in future battles you know look at your bow now um kind of reminding his wife about you know the former fling that she had with ap hill but warren when he comes up here is now going to realize the gravity of the situation he's going to act on the spot he's going to start sending tr he's sending his staff to find those troops to the fifth corps who'd be marching right behind me up the wheatfield road he himself will ride down find an old brigade ironically enough was a brigade he commanded prior to taking over the cheap topographical engineer position of the army he'll find a commander a young man named patty o'rourke 27 years old graduates in the west point class of june of 1861 top of the class bottom of that class is george custer he's the goat as he's known and so he will start sending those troops up this way and in the meantime strong vincent's up here and he's going to start to look around he's going to start to scout himself see where the best position will be he has a beautiful view and he sees that the confederates are starting to wrap around the left of sickle's line so he decides to push his men to the south ironically he doesn't do it with as much speed as you would think we talk about the race the little round top the confederators don't know there's a race yet the union kind of does but strong vincent when you read how these units come on the line the 20th main famous 20th main talks about coming on the line on the right by files in a line it's a very slow maneuver to methodically put your men onto a line uh basically your your front rank deploys while your rear rank holds time and then eventually deploys as well so he has a little bit more time than we think but he's gonna start sending troops out in front of us so send out company a of the 83rd pennsylvania and company b of the 44th new york to be the skirmishers also coming up here will be 16th michigan 20th main 83rd pennsylvania 44th new york they will put the first union troops to arrive up here they'll be reshuffling the line where the 16th michigan will be on the right side uh to their left will be the 44th new york 83rd pennsylvania finally the 20th may the 83rd pennsylvania and 44th new york liked to fight beside one another when the two units came into the army together the 44th new york helped out the 83rd pennsylvania it was a wet night they had no blankets or tents and they brought them together the two units like to fight beside one another through the war and they got the nickname the potomac blues and that is how they want to fight here at gettysburg so that's how we'll start to see our men coming up in the line and strong vincent an untrained military man who's learning on the job decides that he's gonna put up his defensive line in the right place at the right time so it just shows these calculated risks that will be taken by these union soldiers that will see like a governor warren like a patio rook who we'll talk about like a joshua lawrence chamberlain though he might be a little overblown in his own mind uh and others like a man named homer staughton with the second us sharpshooters will turn the tie to battle up here a little round top cool very very cool and chris uh well first of all you're with the american battlefield trust we're on little round top and we're trying to cover as much of the hill as we can because little round top will be closed for a year to a year and a half um you know sometime later this year so we hope that our numerous videos that we've taken up here over the years might serve as some poor replacement we also have a good video called unknown little round top uh where you can see it in the winter where we talk about the nerdiest of the nerdy so i'll i'll encourage you to watch that as well i've also heard some of the units in vince's brigade also called the butterfield twins before as well so pretty interesting uh named after daniel butterfield who designed one of the monuments here and maybe had something to do with writing uh the tune taps so this is the view on little round top but this is the most famous view but there this is mostly skirmishing and sharp shooting back and forth i don't mean that the us sharpshooters are up here the confederate sharpshooters but they're just sniping back and forth for 22 hours after the battle for little round top to be clear no confederates really came up the hill this way although they did try they didn't make it any farther than the very bottom of the valley of death over there okay so this is the view we all come up for and i love taking guided tours up here so that people can gape and wow because the view is much better than people expect now some of the soldiers up here of course are also uh charles haslat this is battery d fifth u.s and he's up here and he's friends with general stephen weed okay and i think you may have heard this story before it looks like we got a guided tour so we'll get out of his way here um you know hazlitt is commanding his guns um you know up in this area from what i can tell his right piece would have been right over there um right near here and he's up here with his friend general weed and weed is shot supposedly on this rock right behind me here and you know he says i am cut in two uh i want to see hazlitt and he brings hazlitt over here and um or has it is brought over here and has supposedly bends down to hear his friends dying words his dying words i'm as dead a man as julius caesar um you know and hazlitt is then shot dead upon the body of his dying friend and supposedly it happened on this rock we have early photos that talk about this being the rock and it's hard to see today but it says hazlitt fell here commanding com apostrophe g um battery d fifth us in battle july 2nd and 3rd 1863. um so this is you know from all the research i've done this is a pretty plausible location for it that rock carving has been here since 1865 at the latest so we are talking about uh you know the earliest monuments of gettysburg are not of stone they are in stone and there's a great story that goes along with stephen weed and his ultimate demise he's taken to the jacob weikert farm which is along the tawny town road and there he uh is supposedly put in the basement and a young lady named tilly pierce is there and she describes seeing weed down there and him making him a promise that she would see him the next morning because he knew that he would die on july the 3rd and she ran downstairs in the morning of july the 3rd only to find out that weed was dead and as staff officers over his body asked the young lady if she knew who he was she said no and he would he will tell her that this is general weed of new york class west point class of 1854 graduated with oliver rhodes howard jeb stewart killed at the age of 31 here at gettysburg wow and he had a very promising career um especially ahead of him uh before he like so many others were cut down there's about 1200 casualties in the battle for a little round top you know it is one of the less costly engagements on the second day of gettysburg actually i mean you know devil's den the wheat field the peach orchard all um resulted in more casualties um now we're gonna have a guest coming up so but we're gonna we're gonna pass this location maybe we'll come back to this this plaque here and maybe we'll come back to a guy with a shiny nose that you're going to see over here i think you know him he is patty o'rourke but to keep this in chronological order we really need to cover a little bit of the other fighting before and of course that's the fight of vincent's brigade we have covered it on numerous videos before but i think it bears a little bit of repeating so i guess i'm going to suspect that our guest our secret guest is hiding very close nearby and i hope she can hear um that we're not gonna quite introduce her yet we're gonna we're gonna wait a minute before we get to her and we are going to talk about this fighting and then we'll introduce our guests so in summary i think you know this is the side of the hill where everything happened i want to set up you know our next set here this is where vincent's brigade was put down as chris mentioned the 16th michigan the 44th new york the 83rd pennsylvania the 20th main way behind me in the woods here vincent didn't put his men on the crest he put them down on a military crest where guns can fire over your head where you don't form a silhouette where can't where um if you have to fall back you're still on the hill where you can maximize your field of fire over there and to be clear the field of fire was much further than you see a lot of those woods down on the lower slopes of big round top were much further away the confederates had more open ground to cross the texans who were attacking this area attacked their repulse they attacked they're repulsed again and now they try to work their way around the line of the men from michigan over there okay the confederates are actually the texans are on this plateau right here the one that is right below us okay so let's pause for a second here because right at that key moment now the fight has begun to move further over into the woods over there where the alabama and maine troops are going to struggle with um with each other and with some pennsylvania troops as well so we're going to get into that in a separate video i believe but for now the disaster the critical point what i call it is the texans are about to are already on that plateau a couple hundred of them maybe and up comes one of the reinforcing regiments the lead element of weeds brigade 140th new york from rochester um and uh to talk about that is our good friend and here she is come on down carol dr carol reardon gettysburg foundation gettysburg college you know her already how are you doing every day an adventure every day in adventure like that take it away there you go we know that one of the things that we're talking a lot about this year in particular is about the soldiers and their units and gary just told you about the 140th new york and how they're from monroe county now the big city in monroe county is rochester but the soldiers i want to tell you about come from all the little small towns outside of rochester especially to the west places like clarkson and ogden and sweden and um a few others like that including one called chili spelled chili but pronounced jilai which i learned the hard way as we learn many things those small towns in many ways were a lot like gettysburg they were about the same size the rhythms of their lives would have been very familiar whether you lived in that part of new york or here in gettysburg that part of new york back in the 1830s and 40s had undergone a great deal of religious revivalism and in fact they called it the second great awakening and the fervor was so intense in that part of the country that they called that part of western new york the burnt over district because of the intensity of the religious fervor some of that legacy was still around at the time of the civil war and it would have a huge impact on the soldiers who decided to enlist in what became company a of the 140th new york infantry usually whenever we talk about a a big fight like gettysburg and say let's go and see what the newspapers have to say about it they talk about the entire battle or they will talk about one soldier from a hometown that became a casualty here in those little small towns that little cluster of neighbor neighboring towns just west of rochester they had to mourn the loss of six of their young men all in this one battle the fight here probably didn't last much more than a half an hour 45 minutes but for company a of the 140th it would be a fatal engagement indeed whenever they they wrote it whenever they published a uh an obituary in the paper it wasn't just simply name and date and when the person died there was almost always a comment on the content of the young man's character if you or if you're looking for a new another new book to read there's a book called this republic of suffering by drew gilpin faust which talks an awful lot about something called a good death one that basically says that you die among friends that you die for a good cause and that you die with a preparation to meet your maker and basically what the the um eulogy here would say is that these six young men from company a of the 140th died good deaths so who were they and what what did we learn about them when they first led off with this obituary they focused on a young man by the name of george v steele george steele was only 19 years and 10 months old they got that specific telling you about him and he was killed here instantly on the 2nd of july about him they wrote a young christian fellow soldier writes to his stricken parents the conduct of your son since he's been in the army has been such as to warrant the belief that the guidance of his ways has been committed to a higher power than man's and that he was daily strengthened and supported by something that can only be found at the feet of jesus also at the same time and it's interesting because the next several paragraphs all begin with that same phrase also at the same time fell corporal theodore b whipple of nearby sweden steele had been from [Music] clarkson whipple was from sweden he was a member of the presbyterian church at brockport he was a living christian beloved by all who knew him a dutiful son and affectionate brother also at the same time fell private david allen also of sweden and a member of the same presbyterian church who was an earnest christian and a faithful sabbath school teacher and in all the relations of life and ornament to the christian profession also at the same time i think they're using some literary artistry here to make the point over and over again that this list does not end quickly kenzie stottle of ogden age 32 the only married man on the list here herbert sailor or perhaps his name is herbert taylor his the records are uncertain here aged 19 years of sweden and george s hoyt a private who's only 18 years old also of sweden all three of them were exemplary in their conduct and lived under the guidance of the principles of the gospel of christ a lot of this information came from their company commander captain milo starks who had raised the company at the beginning of the war he was acknowledged to be a leader of the religious faith in in the company and in time he will be promoted to major he'll last about another 10 months he'll be killed in action in spotsylvania i said earlier that a good death had to be one that was uh that was experienced with friends around them has happened with these soldiers preparation to meet one's maker which seems pretty obvious here but also had to be in a good cause and the summary paragraph tells us why these men were here thus have fallen many noble young men victims of the demon of secession but their sorrowing friends sorrow not as those who have no hope but have evidence that through the strife of battle they have entered the heavenly city the abode of eternal peace and joy lest anybody make fun of the the faith of this these young men and the way they regularly expressed it through such things as being notorious for having a company in which you never heard profanity around the campfires at night the eulogist uh concluded with a final interesting sentence they were called by the thoughtless around them the american tract society company back then if you wanted to share your faith you handed out babel bibles or religious tracts and this group of young men company a 140th new york officially was known by some as the american bible tract company or the american attract society company for every soldier's story that you hear remember that there is a line that goes from that soldier straight back to a hometown to a home community and in a battle like gettysburg where probably multiple strands are going back to one or two towns they're not going to feel that as simply families they're going to feel it as as entire communities entire church congregations entire schools entire towns it's one of those things that we we need to appreciate the war makes itself most apparent here on the hillside at gettysburg but it's felt in ripples all across the country in small towns both north and south thanks so much carol i mean you're so great at these uh individual soldiers were you always like this from the time you've been studying the civil war no not really i i think we all got into it the same way looking at the big battles and in the g whiz part a lot of this really began when i was working on the field guide to gettysburg when i was trying to figure out how to tell the story in ways that could touch as many different people as possible and there are a lot of people who get really bored of hearing generals this and brigade this and but it's hard to turn away from a story that where there's an element of it that you can relate to we can relate to these people because they came from small towns because uh many of them had their lives ahead of them because they had parents because they had religious faith because they had a belief in a cause there's things about them that we can hook onto and i think that's what really got me started trying to tell their stories my only requirement when i was working on the field guide was the p the soldiers i profiled had to never have been profiled anywhere else before open up the casualty list and go that guy and then find his story there's a lot more stories to tell every soldier has one and carol's always finding those that's the field guide to gettysburg and the field guide to antietam and it's you know who fought here what happened here you know who lived here it's a really interesting approach unc press we suggest you get the books they're really good things so um you know we were also continuing on that theme she noted how many people whether it not be at gettysburg or elsewhere you know suffered you know later in 1864 their soldier experience this was just one of them but as far as summing up what happens here patty o'rourke in charge of the 140th new york this will be his last day strong vincent will be mortally wounded here um norvel welch of the 16th michigan will be killed at the battle of peebles farm the following september the 44th new york james c rice is dead the following year orpheus woodward uh is terribly wounded at the battle of the wilderness in 1864 and he's mustered out who is around to tell the story who's alive who could write really well joshua chamberlain the 20th maine is there and we're gonna hear from him this is part one um of our little round top video we're gonna pick it up with another guest as well i think you'll enjoy this um as we cover a little bit more of little round top not only the well-known but a little bit of the less well-known as well thank you so much carol uh for joining us throughout on and off throughout this anniversary thanks to chris for shooting thank you all for supporting battlefield preservation and education you

Channel: American Battlefield Trust

Views: 44,765

Rating: 4.9546924 out of 5

Keywords: American Battlefield Trust, Civil War Trust, little round top tour, gettysburg tour, 158th anniversary of gettysburg, gettysburg preservation

Id: ePcLyOntjTA

Length: 45min 23sec (2723 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021