The 20th Maine at Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863.
In 480 BC, a group of 300 Spartan warriors, backed by another 7,000 Greek soldiers from throughout the Greek Peninsula, gathered at a narrow mountain pass in Central Greece called Thermopylae. Before them was a far superior force of Persian soldiers that is said to have had anywhere from 70,000 to 300,000 men under the command of the Persian king Xerxes I. Xerxes was there to conquer the entirety of Greece, including the influential city-states of Athens and Sparta. Had Xerxes been successful, the entirety of Western Civilization would have been rewritten.
The Spartan king Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors became legends for their actions at Thermopylae, even if some of the details of the battle have become more myth than fact. On the third day of fighting, all 300 Spartans were killed after being surrounded, but not before inflicting heavy casualties on the Persians over the course of the three-day battle. While the Battle of Thermopylae was a defeat for the Spartans and the Greeks, a weakened Persian army was later defeated by other Greek forces in subsequent battles.
A small group of determined men, acting on behalf of a cause far greater than themselves, turned the tide of history with their courage. The “stand of the 300” or “last stand of the 300” has been part of history ever since.
Is there an American equivalent to the “stand of the 300?” While there is no shortage of heroic acts by American soldiers throughout history that deserve praise, there is no equivalent to Thermopylae. However, there have been instances of small groups of American soldiers who have changed history through their actions.
As America passes the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the story of one group of determined soldiers that had a disproportionate influence over the course of the battle that changed the Civil War deserves to be told. By July 1863, the Civil War was beginning its third year, and in the Eastern Theater of the war, Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia had inflicted two defeats upon the Union Army of the Potomac at the battles of Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. Another major defeat for the Union Army would have continued to weaken Northern morale and support for the war.
This was the hope of Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who drafted a letter to seek peace negotiations should the Confederates win another decisive victory. By invading the North and threatening Washington, D.C., Lee sought to further demoralize Northerners and shorten the war for the Confederacy before the diminishing resources in the South ran out. Lee hoped the next battle would be the last. It turned out that a small town in Southern Pennsylvania called Gettysburg was where this battle was fought.
There were many heroes of the Battle of Gettysburg over its three days. On July 1, 1863, the first day of the battle, a Union cavalry officer named John Buford saw Confederate forces moving toward the small town of Gettysburg. Fearing the bulk of Lee’s army was behind them and would occupy the heights around the town, Buford and his men dismounted their horses and engaged the Confederate forces in front of them. What started as small skirmishing continued to grow as more men deployed to the battle. Both armies sent back word to their superiors that a battle was underway. Buford’s actions delayed the Confederate’s advance long enough to keep the high ground surrounding Gettysburg under Union control, a fact that played an important part in the battle as it unfolded.
As the sun rose on the morning of July 2, 1863, Robert E. Lee faced a fortified Union Army that held high ground overlooking the town of Gettysburg. He decided to attack anyway. The Union had its forces positioned in the shape of a fishhook, with a mountainous area called Culps Hill on the far right of the Union line and another mountainous area called Round Top on the Union left flank. Round Top consisted of two hills, Big Round Top and a smaller 650-foot hill called Little Round Top. While Big Round Top was higher, it was covered with trees and rocks that made placing men and artillery atop it difficult. Little Round Top had far fewer trees and was more accessible. Therefore, control over Little Round Top became the focus of both armies.
The Confederates sought to gain control of Little Round Top and place artillery upon it, thereby threatening the entire Union line of battle. It was the overall Union commander at Gettysburg, George Mead, only a few days into command of the Army of the Potomac, who described the significance of holding Little Round Top, saying after the battle, “But for the timely advance of the Fifth Corps and the prompt sending of a portion to Round Top [Little Round Top], where they met the enemy almost on the crest and had a desperate fight to secure the position – I say but for these circumstances the enemy would have secured Round Top, planted his artillery there, commanding the whole battlefield, and what the result would have been I leave you to judge.” Due to the heroic actions of Union soldiers, Mead was only left to speculate about this.
The position of the 20th Maine on Little Round Top.
On the second day of the battle, Lee focused his attack on the Union left flank where Little Round Top was located. George Mead ordered a Union general named Daniel Sickles to defend the heights of Round Top. However, Sickles disobeyed this order and moved his men forward instead, leading to fierce fighting in the fields and rocks below. This action left Little Round Top undefended.
Union General Gouverneur Warren came to assess the defenses on Little Round Top and found the hill undefended. He began to immediately issue orders to place soldiers on the hill. After intercepting a message meant for another officer asking for help on Little Round Top, Colonel Strong Vincent sprang into action. He understood the gravity of the situation and ordered the 1,350 men of his brigade to occupy Little Round Top immediately.
At the extreme left flank of the Union line of battle, Vincent placed the 358 fighting men of the 20th Maine Regiment. The 20th Maine had seen harrowing action at Fredericksburg but was not considered a particularly effective regiment. That all changed in a few hours. The regiment was led by Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a professor of rhetoric and modern languages at Bowdoin College in Maine and, like a majority of the Union Army, had volunteered to fight.
Strong Vincent explained to Chamberlain that his regiment represented the extreme left flank of the Union line of battle and that the position had to be held. Some versions state that Vincent told Chamberlain to hold the ground “at all costs,” while others state that Vincent used the phrase “to the last.” Whatever was said, Chamberlain understood his regiment’s situation.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
Shortly after the 20th Maine and three other regiments, the 44th New York, 16th Michigan, and 83rd Pennsylvania, were put into position on Little Round Top, intense fighting began. The 644 Confederate soldiers of the 15th Alabama Regiment, under the command of Colonel William Oates, charged up the hill toward the 20th Maine. The Confederates would charge, then retreat, then charge again. Chamberlain ordered his line extended as the Confederates tried to outflank the Union soldiers. This left the men of the 20th Maine spread out but prevented them from being overrun and defeated.
The 20th Maine was believed to have discharged 15,000 rounds during the fight for Little Round Top. The problem was that they were running out of ammunition as the Confederates continued to charge up the hill. Chamberlain faced a difficult decision. He understood the potential disaster if the Confederates gained control of this position, so he gave an order that has become the focus of many discussions about Gettysburg ever since. He yelled, “Fix bayonets!” The men of the 20th Maine did just that. When the Confederates came up the hill again, this time, the Union men charged downhill toward them. This surprised the tired Confederate soldiers and resulted in most of them either being killed, captured, or retreating. The Confederates did not make another charge.
While the 20th Maine was on the extreme left of the Union position, it was necessary that the other three regiments to their right defend Little Round Top for it to be kept in Union possession. One of these regiments, the 16th Michigan, began to be overrun by Confederate soldiers. Colonel Patrick O’Rorke and his 140th New York Regiment quickly moved forward and closed the gap in the line of battle that was forming, another decisive action that saved the Union position on Little Round Top.
While Joshua Chamberlain has become the celebrated face of the 20th Maine, it was the bravery of all of these men that held Little Round Top for the Union. Sergeant Andrew Tozier had been part of a group of 120 men from the 2nd Maine, a Union regiment that had been disbanded. Just a week earlier, these men had been attached to the 20th Maine after they refused to fight because of a dispute over service time. Chamberlain was able to convince most of the men from the old 2nd Maine, including Tozier, to join and fight with the 20th Maine instead of facing court-martials. These extra men proved invaluable on Little Round Top. Andrew Tozier received the Medal of Honor for his actions that day.
While it was Chamberlain who ultimately gave the command to fix bayonets, some contend that it was a company commander named Holman Melcher who first thought of the idea. Another 20th Maine officer who deserves recognition is Captain Ellis Spear. He commanded the far left of the regiment that was under the most pressure from the beginning of the assault and deserves recognition for his heroic actions and leadership.
The men of the 20th Maine reunite on Little Round Top in 1889.
On July 3, 1863, Robert E. Lee made the most fateful decision of the war. He ordered approximately 12,500 men to cross open ground under Union artillery fire to attack the center of the Union line. “Pickett’s Charge” as it was called because Confederate General George Pickett led the attack, was considered the “high-water mark” of the Confederacy. The Confederacy would never be as strong as it was before its soldiers were soundly defeated attacking the center of the Union line at Gettysburg. This was the last major engagement of the battle. The Union was victorious.
Lee and what remained of his army crossed back into Virginia after the battle. The Confederacy was never able to go on the offensive again. On July 4, 1863, another Union army led by Ulysses S. Grant defeated the last remaining Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg. The Union obtained complete control over the Mississippi River, cutting the Confederacy in two.
Although the bloodshed of the Civil War continued into 1864 and further into 1865, Robert E. Lee ultimately surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865. The Union victory at Gettysburg proved pivotal in ending the deadliest war in American history.
The Civil War, more than any other war in American history, leads many to study its battles, generals, and individual military units with great intensity. There will be those who disagree with equating the 20th Maine with the Spartan stand of Thermopylae. This misses the point.
This is about the heroism of the American soldier. Fate placed the 20th Maine at that point on the battlefield that day. Like so many other groups of soldiers in different American wars, they responded. Would another unit have done the same? Probably, yes, but we can only speculate about an alternative sequence of events. We know with certainty that the actions of the 20th Maine played an important part in securing the Union victory at Gettysburg. This needs to be recognized. All of us today are the beneficiaries of those who have come before us who struggled, sacrificed, and in too many cases died at places like Gettysburg to preserve something not found in large amounts in the human experience – Liberty.
On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered what many consider to be the finest speech in American history when he came to the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery on the battlefield and delivered the Gettysburg Address. In total, almost 94,000 Union soldiers participated in the battle, along with a little under 72,000 Confederate soldiers. Over 51,000 soldiers on both sides were casualties (killed, wounded, captured, or missing), making the three-day Battle of Gettysburg the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. Of this number, a little over 7,000 soldiers on both sides were killed in action. Those killed included Strong Vincent, Patrick O’Rorke, and twenty-nine soldiers from the 20th Maine.
Nothing I can say will eclipse Lincoln’s concluding words about the men who made the ultimate sacrifice at Gettysburg: “…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
Note: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain received the Medal of Honor for his actions on Little Round Top, was wounded multiple times throughout the Civil War, and went on to become the four-term governor of Maine. His Confederate counterpart on Little Round Top, William Oates, served as the governor of Alabama for one term.
Recommended Reading:
The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. (The title “The Killer Angels” is said to have come from the line in William Shakespeare’s classic drama Hamlet, “What a piece of work is man, in action, how like an angel.” Joshua Chamberlain’s father is said to have commented, “If man is an angel, he sure is a murderin’ angel.” The scholarly Joshua Chamberlain is said to have written an oration on the subject titled “Man, the Killer Angel.”)