The assault was launched by the division of Major General John Bell Hood, of Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s First Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. Hood’s division attacked the Union left flank at Little Round Top on the afternoon of July 2, 1863, the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. His troops struck Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, and the southern slope of Little Round Top. The fight for that rocky hill involved only a fraction of Hood’s division, yet it became the most famous episode of the day.
The question rewards a precise answer because the popular telling compresses a complicated attack into a single image. Hood did not personally lead a charge up Little Round Top. He was wounded before his division fully engaged. His brigades attacked across a front more than a mile wide, and only one of them, Brigadier General Evander Law’s Alabama brigade, climbed the hill’s wooded slope. Understanding how that fragment of a division ended up deciding the fate of the Union line requires following the ground, the orders, and the timing.
Mechanism: How Hood’s Attack Reached the Hill
Longstreet’s First Corps opened the afternoon attack on the Federal left. Hood’s division formed the right of that attacking line, with Major General Lafayette McLaws’s division to its left. Hood’s brigades were ordered to move up the Emmitsburg Road toward the Union positions on Cemetery Ridge. The ground in front of them, however, was not open farmland. It was broken by boulders, woods, and a low ridge that screened the Union line.
That screen produced a fatal misreading. Confederate commanders believed the Union left ended near the Peach Orchard, when in fact Major General Daniel Sickles’s Third Corps had advanced well forward of its assigned line. Hood requested permission to swing his division to the right, around the apparent Union flank, rather than attack straight ahead. Longstreet refused initially, then relented after the attack began. The result was a wheeling movement to the south and east that carried Hood’s brigades toward Devil’s Den and the rocky hills beyond.
Little Round Top sat at the extreme south end of the Union line, and on the morning of July 2 it was nearly undefended. Brigades under Colonel Strong Vincent and Brigadier General Stephen Weed arrived only shortly before the Confederates did. The hill’s value was topographic: artillery there could sweep the entire Union line and enfilade any attack on Cemetery Ridge. Whoever held the summit controlled the geometry of the battlefield.
The assault on the hill itself came from Law’s brigade, supported later by troops from Brigadier General Jerome Robertson’s Texas brigade. The 15th Alabama and 47th Alabama regiments attacked up the southern and western slopes. The 4th and 5th Texas regiments pressed the opposite side. The fighting was close-range and disjointed, fought among boulders with muzzle-loading rifles at ranges often under 50 yards.
Law’s men reached the crest repeatedly. The 20th Maine, holding the extreme left of the Union line, bent back under the pressure and counterattacked downslope with a bayonet charge. That counterattack, ordered by Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, closed the gap and ended the Confederate attempt on that sector. By nightfall the Union line held, but the hill had been contested for roughly two hours.
The mechanism matters because it explains why a single brigade, not a division, made the famous climb. Hood’s attack was a broad wheeling movement across rough ground, and the hill was one objective among several. The assault’s fame came from what was at stake on that slope, not from the size of the force committed to it.
Quantified Context: Size, Ground, and Cost
Precise strength figures for the assault are estimates, and historians differ on the totals. The numbers below are widely accepted ranges rather than exact returns, and they should be read that way.
Hood’s division entered the attack with roughly 7,000 to 8,000 soldiers present for duty across five brigades. Of that force, Law’s brigade numbered roughly 1,900 to 2,100 men before the attack. The two Alabama regiments that climbed the southern slope, the 15th and 47th, fielded on the order of 600 to 800 men between them, though regimental returns vary. The 20th Maine held the Union left with fewer than 400 men at the start of the fight and lost roughly a third of them as casualties.
The terrain compressed the numbers further. Little Round Top rises about 150 feet above the surrounding ground, with slopes steep enough in places to slow a climb to a walk. The wooded southern face offered cover but broke unit cohesion. Attacks that began on line arrived at the crest in fragments.
Casualties on the hill were heavy relative to the numbers engaged. The 20th Maine reported roughly 130 killed, wounded, and missing. The 15th Alabama lost a comparable share of its strength, with some company rolls reduced to a handful of men. Across Hood’s entire division, casualties for July 2 ran into the high hundreds, with several regiments losing more than 40 percent of their men.
The wider arithmetic of the day is starker. Confederate attacks on July 2 cost the Army of Northern Virginia several thousand casualties across Longstreet’s and Major General Richard Anderson’s corps. Union losses on the left were also severe, with Sickles’s Third Corps effectively wrecked as a fighting formation. The hill itself was held, but the cost on both sides was high.
Artillery rarely decided the hill fight. The slopes were too steep and the woods too thick for effective cannon fire, and the summit’s guns arrived late. The fight was decided by infantry with rifles, which is one reason it became a staple of close-combat study.
Timeline: The Afternoon of July 2
| Time (approx.) | Event |
|---|---|
| Early afternoon | Longstreet’s corps begins its attack; Hood’s division advances on the right |
| Mid-afternoon | Hood’s brigades wheel south and east toward Devil’s Den and the rocky hills |
| Mid-afternoon | Hood is wounded; brigade and regimental commanders direct the fight |
| Late afternoon | Law’s Alabama regiments attack up the southern slope of Little Round Top |
| Late afternoon | The 20th Maine counterattacks downslope; the Confederate left is stopped |
| Early evening | Texas regiments press the opposite slope; Union reinforcements secure the summit |
| Nightfall | Union line holds; the hill remains in Federal hands |
The timeline compresses what was a confused, piecemeal fight. Units entered the hill fight at different times, and the crest changed hands locally more than once. The sequence above reflects the general flow rather than a minute-by-minute record.
Edge Cases: What the Record Does Not Settle
The historical record leaves several questions open, and honest accounts should say so.
One is the exact strength of the attacking force on the hill. Regimental returns for July 2 are incomplete, and the chaos of the fight scattered units. Estimates of the Alabama regiments engaged on the southern slope vary by several hundred men. No single figure should be treated as definitive.
Another is Hood’s role after his wound. A shell fragment struck Hood’s left arm early in the advance, and he left the field. Command passed to Law, the senior brigade commander, but coordination across the division was already poor. Whether Hood’s original plan would have produced a different attack cannot be known.
A third is the timing of the Union reinforcement. Vincent’s brigade reached the hill shortly before the Confederates, but the margin is measured in minutes and is debated. Some accounts place the arrival dangerously close to the first Confederate contact. The margin was thin enough that small delays could have changed the outcome.
A fourth is the weight of the 20th Maine’s counterattack. Popular accounts sometimes make the bayonet charge the decisive act of the hill fight. In practice, the Confederate attack on that sector was already losing cohesion from casualties, broken ground, and ammunition shortages. The charge exploited a wavering attack rather than reversing a successful one.
These edge cases do not change the core answer. They do change how the battle should be taught. The hill was saved by a combination of timely reinforcement, difficult ground, and stubborn defense, not by one dramatic charge alone.
Misconceptions: What the Famous Story Gets Wrong
Popular accounts of Little Round Top repeat several errors, and each one distorts the mechanism.
Hood’s entire division did not attack the hill. Most of his brigades fought at Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, and the woods around them. Hood did not lead the assault on the hill personally. He was wounded early and left the field. Little Round Top was not undefended until the moment of attack. Union troops arrived shortly before the Confederates and held the crest. The 20th Maine did not fight alone. Several Union regiments held the hill, including the 83rd Pennsylvania, the 44th New York, and the 16th Michigan. The bayonet charge was not the sole turning point. It capped a defense that had already cost the attackers heavily. The hill was not the only objective of the day. The fighting at the Peach Orchard, Devil’s Den, and the Wheatfield was equally savage and shaped the outcome.
The deepest misconception is structural. The battle is often remembered as a series of heroic stand-alone episodes, when it was in fact a single engagement in which each sector affected the others. The fight for the hill cannot be separated from the collapse of Sickles’s line or the arrival of Union reinforcements along the southern flank.
A professional caveat worth stating: many regimental histories of the hill were written decades after the war by survivors with reputations to protect. Chamberlain’s account, influential in shaping the popular story, was written well after 1863 and reflects later memory as well as wartime experience. That does not make the accounts false, but it makes them evidence to weigh rather than testimony to accept.
Comparison: How Historians Frame the Hill Fight
| Framing | What it emphasizes | What it underplays |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional heroic narrative | The 20th Maine’s stand and Chamberlain’s charge | The wider division attack and Confederate losses |
| Operational history | Longstreet’s orders and Hood’s wheeling movement | The small scale of the hill fight relative to the day |
| Terrain analysis | Slope, woods, and sight lines | The role of individual commanders |
| Unit study | Regimental casualties and cohesion | The strategic stakes of the hill |
| Memory studies | How the story was retold after the war | Wartime conditions and uncertainty |
| Combined-arms view | Artillery, infantry, and timing together | The drama that made the fight famous |
Each framing answers a different question. The operational view best explains which general’s division launched the assault. The terrain view best explains why the assault failed on the hill even as it succeeded elsewhere. A complete account uses several framings at once.
Practical Actions: How to Verify the Answer Yourself
For readers who want to check the claim rather than accept it, the steps below are concrete.
First, consult the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I, Volume XXVII, Part 2, which contains the after-action reports for Gettysburg. The reports of Longstreet, Hood, Law, and the Union brigade commanders are the primary documentary basis for the answer. Read them for what each commander says he was ordered to do and what he believed he faced.
Second, check unit strengths against the compiled strength returns for July 1 to July 3, 1863. Present-for-duty figures before the attack, not battle casualties alone, give the best sense of the force committed. Treat any single figure as an estimate.
Third, use the terrain. A topographic map of the hill at a scale of 1:24,000 or finer shows why the southern slope channeled attackers into narrow approaches. Walk the ground if you can; the slope reads differently on foot than in a diagram.
Fourth, separate wartime reports from postwar memoirs. Wartime reports were written within weeks, under pressure, and often overstate enemy strength. Memoirs were written years later and reflect reputations. Both are useful, but they answer different questions.
Fifth, cross-check regimental histories against each other. Where two regiments describe the same hour differently, the discrepancy is usually about position and timing, not about whether the attack happened.
Sixth, avoid treating any single secondary account as definitive. The best modern studies of Gettysburg synthesize the Official Records, regimental histories, and terrain analysis. A claim that cannot be traced to a wartime report or a documented return should be flagged as uncertain.
Limitations: What This Answer Cannot Establish
This account explains the command relationship and the mechanism of the attack. It does not settle every disputed detail of the hill fight, and it should not be read as a full tactical history of July 2.
The strength figures are estimates drawn from standard returns and should be treated as ranges. Casualty figures for individual regiments vary between sources and are sometimes rounded by later authors. The timeline is approximate, because clock times in 1863 reports were recorded loosely and units did not synchronize.
The article also cannot resolve the counterfactual questions that make the battle interesting. Whether a different Confederate commander could have taken the hill, or whether an earlier Union occupation would have changed the day, are matters of judgment rather than record. The answer to the keyword question is firm: Hood’s division launched the assault, and Law’s brigade made the climb. Everything beyond that is interpretation built on incomplete evidence.
No medical, legal, or financial advice is offered here. This is general historical information about a Civil War engagement, not a tactical recommendation or an endorsement of any military action. Readers seeking authoritative treatment should consult the Official Records and peer-reviewed histories of the campaign.