Little Round Top at Gettysburg

Little Round Top. Three words that resonate in American military history. It was there, at one of the most visited sites on the Gettysburg battlefield, that Confederates under Maj. Gen. John B. Hood tried to turn the left flank of the Army of the Potomac. Only the supreme efforts of Col. Strong Vincent’s brigade and a handful of others, including Brig. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren and Cols. Patrick O’Rorke and Joshua Chamberlain, saved the high ground and potential disaster for the Union army. Little Round Top at Gettysburg: A Reassessment of July 2, 1863 is the first full-length in-depth treatment of this complex bloody affair in two decades.

Most visitors today became familiar with the fighting on Little Round Top after reading Michael Shaara’s 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Killer Angels, which enjoyed renewed popularity following the movie Gettysburg two decades later. Both portrayals took license with what happened there, and many of the accounts by the men who fought there, and those who have written about it, abound with inconsistencies and, in some cases, are based on incomplete information. Joseph Michael Boslet’s years of studying primary sources, including battle reports, soldier narratives, and regimental histories, confirmed many events but contradicted others.

The author, a Vietnam combat veteran and passionate student of the Civil War, reexamined practical aspects of basic tactics when considering the placement of regiments and their use of 19th century approaches to combat. He walked every yard of that rocky hillside too often to count. Boslet’s unique perspective is based on having experienced many of the same situations, similar combat experiences, and the same emotions as these soldiers—blue and gray—in their fighting on Little Round Top.

Together with helpful original maps, photos, and explanatory notes, Little Round Top at Gettysburg is a practical history that can be enjoyed in an easy chair or taken onto the battlefield to walk the same ground the soldiers fought over, and see the battle as they may have viewed it.