
Joseph Hooker, belatedly became aware of the Confederates’ movement, he began to force-march his army north, trying to keep Lee to the west and screen Washington from the Rebel troops. When the Army of the Potomac’s commander, Maj. Lee’s main objective was to move across the Potomac River and try to separate the Union forces from Washington. Lee began the Army of Northern Virginia’s second invasion of the North. On June 3, 1863, Confederate General Robert E. But did Chamberlain really deserve the credit he received? Or, to put it another way, did he deserve all the credit? Answering that question adequately requires taking another look at the Battle of Gettysburg and the hell-raising fighting that occurred among the scattered stones of Little Round Top.
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Numerous books and even the popular movie Gettysburg have helped fuel adulation for the Union officer.

The regiment’s sudden, desperate bayonet charge blunted the Confederate assault on Little Round Top and has been credited with saving Major General George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac, winning the Battle of Gettysburg and setting the South on a long, irreversible path to defeat.įor many years, historians and writers have given the lion’s share of the credit for the 20th’s dramatic action on Little Round Top to Chamberlain. Late in the afternoon of July 2, 1863, on a boulder-strewn hillside in southern Pennsylvania, Union Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain dashed headlong into history, leading his 20th Maine Regiment in perhaps the most famous counterattack of the Civil War. Saved Land Browse Interactive Map View active campaigns.


