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alright, i'd like to welcome everybody togettysburg national military park, my name is matt. so we're out here on little roundtop and we're so glad you came out to join us for the little round top tour. now lookpeople, this is what gettysburg is all about. i'm not saying about me, but about this vistawhich you have right out here and the landscape and the weather which we're having. so we'restanding here in front of little round top on the crest of it. north is behind the cameraor most of you to your right, the west is obviously behind me, and east is behind thecrowd right over here. the open area is to the west. when you come out here to gettysburgnational military park whether you're a civil war buff or not, most people will make a trekhere to little round top, for a number of

reasons. like i alluded to earlier it's absolutelya fantastic view from up here on this hill overlooking the entire battlefield. i can'ttell you how many people i've seen down here at sunset watching the sunset or ponderingthe military movements or doing whatever out here taking pictures. it is just a beautifulplace. 151 years ago on july 2nd of 1863, this was a hot place both literally and figuratively.this place was a hill of death and it was not known by most soldiers as little roundtop. it didn't have a name. as far as i know it was referred to in the reports as “thatlittle mountain” by the confederates or “that stony hill” by the federals. bythe end of the battle, by the time the history books are written, it becomes known as littleround top. now how do we get to little round

top -- how does it become significant? ifyou think about it little round top goes through several transformations and it's going througha transformation today. historically, the first hero of the battle of gettysburg isactually right over here. this gentleman right here, and i don't mean you [laughter] i meanthim. okay? sort of funny? a little bit funny? this is gouverneur k. warren, and reportedly,if they've got it correct, if they marked it correctly, this is the rock which he stoodupon and which this visitor right here is on the periphery of breaking this rule byhaving his foot on this rock. but he's halfway there. gouverneur k. warren is from new york.he is an up and coming star in the union army. he is the chief engineer of the army of thepotomac. what does that mean? he serves on

the big general's staff and he goes out andhe looks at terrain. he will position troops. he has a lot of latitude within the unionarmy. now warren, why is he standing upon this rock? on july 2nd, he climbs up thishill basically by himself to find two or three soldiers from the signal corps. wig-waggingback and forth. messages. what he doesn't find is anybody else and that's a big dealto warren. because at that time that warren comes up here, the confederates are startingtheir attack from this distant wood line over there. that is seminary ridge and warfieldridge off in this distance right here. now, ladies and gentlemen, it depends on what erayou're from as far as what warren's reaction is going to be upon seeing this hill unoccupied.if you come from perhaps the world war ii

or korea generation you would perhaps havethe reaction that this is not a good event to happen. if you were a product of the 60s,possibly a baby-boomer and so forth you would probably say "far out. heavy." if you're partof the newest generation such as this young man back here you would probably just stareinto space [laughter]. because you will have no reaction. and if you're from the modern,modern generation you're not even listening to what i'm saying anyway because you're currentlytexting. with that in mind though ladies and gentleman, basically little round top is goingto become the centerpiece of the battle on july 2nd. it's a place that the confederateswant to hold and it's a place that the union forces want to hold and it becomes, in a nutshell,a race against time to see which one can get

here first. when you get in a battle you haveto get a lot of breaks in order to win it. the union army is good, the confederate armyis good. they get a big break when gouverneur k. warren climbs up here on top of this rock.going back to what i said earlier about how the history of the hill can change-- how manyof you have seen the movie gettysburg? the vast majority of you have seen the movie gettysburg.who's the hero in the movie gettysburg? chamberlain! joshua chamberlain. we're going to touch onchamberlain later and chamberlain is a big part of this battle, i'm not diminishing that.but to show you how history changes you will notice that chamberlain does not have a bronzestatue. warren does. in the 1800s, in the 19th century folks, gouverneur k. warren isthe hero of little round top. not joshua chamberlain.

and that's how much it meant to the peopleof the united states to erect that statue right out here. now why is the hill unoccupied?let's back up a little bit. now the great thing about being on little round top is youlook out across this field and you can see for a long distance. the beautiful thing aboutpreserving this battlefield ladies and gentleman is you get to come up here in 2014 and makethe same decisions that they did 151 years ago because the terrain is pristine. now thisis the situation up here. armies are comprised of corps. there are seven union army corps.six of those union army corps are under command of west point graduates. the 7th corps whichis designated the 3rd corps is commanded by dan sickles. uncle dan. alright? uncle danis somebody that is controversial to say the

least. he is most well-known for having shothis wife's lover across the street from the white house at lafayette square and then hissubsequent acquittal on the grounds of "temporary insanity." the first time in american jurisprudencehistory that that defense has been used. gets away with it scot-free. what you need to knowabout dan sickles is that he can make a decision. whether you agree with the decision is upto you, but know it for a fact that dan sickles will make a decision. dan sickles and his3rd corps of about 10,000 men are positioned between little round top off to the northto your right. he is positioned between here and that pennsylvania memorial. and he issupposed to extend his line down to the left. now when you get into gettysburg and you getinto controversies out here-- was sickles

ordered to occupy the hill? you can have scholarsthat argue he was and you can have scholars that argue he wasn't. regardless you don'thave to be a military scholar to figure out that this hill is pretty important. but there'sa caveat. sickles is looking at this terrain up here where you see those distant red barns--and this is the thing about preserving this park ladies and gentlemen. because you cango down there and see the same thing sickles did. he perceives that the ground in frontof him is a better place to occupy than the one he is ordered. and in sickle's defensehe tries to get clarification from headquarters, the big men, george meade. and he can't getany clarification. and the clock ticks on throughout the morning of july 2nd and sicklesbecomes more antsy and more antsy about the

confederates occupying that high ground, soaround noon sickles makes a decision for better or worse he decides that his orders allowhim to advance his corps right out front along the emmitsburg road. the great thing aboutthe battle of gettysburg is that you come here for the next five days take a littleround top tour and you will get a different tour every time because everyone's got a differentview. and this is going to be my opinion; the problem with me telling you anything aboutdan sickles is that dan sickles never admits any guilt about his move out here. it wasalways the right move and sickles by trade is not a soldier, he is a? [politician?] apolitician and a? somebody that can obfuscate facts very good. a lawyer! there you go. obfuscate.i had a hard time getting that one out but

it worked out for me right there. that's oneof them four syllable words. so sickles is going to move his corps out in front. whati assume he thought, or his perceptions were, is that on the other side of those red barnsin those woods right here behind them. he sends out a reconnaissance and they bump intoconfederates. there are actually union monuments over by the modern day park amphitheater.there's two of them. you can go over there and see them today. those monuments are therebecause of that reconnaissance and they bump into the confederates where the monumentsare. you know, they had to fight around the monuments and they get nicked up and everythingbut it's all right. at least somebody thought it was funny. based on that, and this is mytheory, based on that i think that sickles

feels that his time is up so what does hedo? he decides that the confederates are over there and he marches them out and positionsthem along the emmitsburg road where those red barns are. the apex will be in an invertedv and the apex of his line is at the peach orchard. the peach orchard is located through that small little gap, you can barelysee some bushes. right over the edge of this tree line is where the peach orchard is. that'swhere sickles's line-- i'm the apex, is going to bend back around. his right flank alongthe red barns, his left flank coming this way and resting right down there in a placecalled devil's den. his corps? a little under 10,000. say about 9 maybe or something. weget into aggregate and into present and shirkers and you know what did he really have and soforth. devil's den! worst ground i ever saw

for fighting. what is the point though? hisline ends there. and this is the neat thing once again about preserving the battlefield.he moves his corps out there. he doesn't have enough men. he doesn't have enough men tocover his front. so what ends up happening? gaps! he does not connect his right flankwith the rest of the union army and his left flank fails to occupy the key of this area,which is ... little round top. this is not at trick quiz, okay? [laughter]. so what areyou going to do? george meade the union army commander has to react to dan sickles, andwhether you agree with dan sickles or not this is the ultimate repercussion from sickles'smove out there. when sickles throws that corps out in front of the union army and georgemeade finds out about it he comes riding up.

sickles's headquarters is over here at thetrostle farm. i would love to have been a fly on the wall when george meade caught upwith dan sickles right over, that tree line you can barely see the white side of thatbarn right over there. that's sickles's headquarters. meade was a professional military officerand i'm sure he expressed his opinion freely with dan sickles that day. sickles offersto withdraw his corps but at this time the confederates are beginning to start theirattack. so what are the repercussions? the repercussions are that the whole union armyis going to have to support sickles-- that is beyond doubt. sickles’s move becomesa gigantic vacuum cleaner which sucks in all these union units into this fight. so in anutshell, what you have here ladies and gentleman

is waves of fresh union reinforcements comingin here and waves of fresh confederates coming in and hitting the federals. and what youend up with is a seesaw battle right out here in front of little round top, that's the wheatfieldin a nutshell and that's why it changes hands so many times. the wheatfield is right behindthis tree line directly in front. you can't really see it but it's right behind there.[were those trees there?] the trees were there! that's a very good question, sir. i can tellyou that -- this is the strengths and limitations -- i can tell you that those woods in frontof me, the rose woods, were there, i can tell you that the perimeter of the woods todayis about like it was in 1863. what i can't tell you and what the maps limit me with isthe denseness. and the one thing that we've

lost in the 151 years, a big thing as faras views, is that we don't have any more animals. back 151 years ago they had cows in there,and what do cows do to the underbrush? they chew it. they knock it down. so you couldsee deeper into those woods than you can today. i can't tell you this tree was there thistree wasn't there, just the perimeter. very good question. i need some cow. how aboutsome goats? chickens? pot-bellied pig? no? wild boar? that'd be nice. give them a spook.down there at devil's den. alright? so sickles has moved out front. before i've moved tothe confederate side are there any questions? i'm doing better than i thought. that's thereason warren is going to ride up here. sickles has failed to occupy it. all right, confederates.robert e. lee is sitting back at this headquarters

at the northern end of seminary ridge. ifyou look off in the distance above that barn with the three white little white cupolasright there, if you look above it you will see a church steeple. you will see a churchsteeple along those woods. that is roughly where lee's headquarters is. that is the codoribarn. now lee wants to attack the union army over here, so how does he get at it? he sendsout a reconnaissance at dawn under the name of captain johnson, samuel johnson. you wantto get into controversial gettysburg actions; captain johnson is one of those things thatwill never be solved. johnson will state that he got to little round top. and that he sawthat the hill was unoccupied and people have debated that ever since. we don't know exactlywhere he got but it's not really important,

what's important is what he tells robert e.lee and what he tells lee is that the union army, their left flank, my left right hereis in the air, meaning it is not anchored, it can be turned, cross the t on it. and basedon that intelligence which is derived at dawn probably about four or five o'clock in themorning, lee bases his attack plan for july 2nd. now remember what time i told you. earlydawn. lee therefore turns to his subordinate, his corps commander, a guy by the name ofjames longstreet. i want you to go over there and attack this union line. longstreet protests,according to longstreet, and says you know we were going to fight a defensive battleyou shouldn't be doing this. lee and him have a meeting and lee decides to attack anyway.longstreet argues -- remember corps are comprised

of divisions, divisions of brigades, and brigadesare comprised of regiments -- longstreet argues that he should be able to await one brigadeof alabamians to come in from guilford court house in pennsylvania and then he will starthis attack, and for better or worse for all we know lee starts to acquiesce to this. butwhat it ends up doing is costing time. the whole theme of this thing is time in caseyou ain't got it. now lee wants this attack to start as early as possible, and that'strue of any attack, except for maybe modern day, because what do you have to have in orderto fight? light! you have to have light. the darkness is your enemy, especially if you'rean attacker and trying to move and coordinate right here. now what ends up happening ladiesand gentlemen is that longstreet and that

brigade of alabamians does not reach hereuntil around eleven or twelve o’clock and longstreet does not start his countermarch,which will be another five miles, until around noon. it takes time. you're talking aboutmoving on a road that's about a one lane country road with hundreds of wagons, dozens of artillerypieces, and thousands of men, and guess what? they haven't reconnoitered the place. if heis a hill, this gentleman right here, they get to a hill behind seminary ridge and theycome up to the hill and they realize that this gentleman is little round top that theycan see the hill from? little round top. so longstreet is in a pickle because he's onthis one lane road and he can't go over the top of the hill. so it looks like the thingto do would be to just about face everybody

turn around and you make the tail the headand you march this way. reverse it. what longstreet ends up doing is keeping the head the headand he turns that entire column like a snake around on that one lane road. do you knowhow long that had to take? to get that thing turned around? time is ticking, is ticking,is ticking, and so what i'm telling you is that it's three o’clock in the afternoonby the time that longstreet pulls up along this wood line. what time did lee formulatethat plan? early dawn? now it's ten hours later. and what has changed dramatically forthe confederates since that plan was formulated in this area? [lots of union troops.] who'smoved out here? uncle dan. alright uncle dan. so let's go back to the beginning of the talk.when george meade hears something is amiss

on the union left flank over here he ridesout to the trostle barn and on his way there he turns to his chief engineer, gouverneurk. warren. he says warren, i hear a little peppering over there on yonder hill. why don'tyou ride over there and see what's going on? and warren rides up here to find sickles lineending down there in the devil's den. and he has a hunch. the confederates are alreadyfiring directly behind me at that observation tower. there's probably already artillerygoing off, but he has a hunch that the rebels are extending way over into the hills offof those wood lines. so he sends a message down to those union guns in the devil's denand he turns, he has those guns pivot, and they fire a few shells into that wood line.what happens when they fire the shells into

the wood line? what do people do in the woodline when the shells come in? [start to move around?] they move! they duck! and what doesthe sunlight do on their barrels? it glitters. and that ladies and gentleman is why gouverneurk. warren is standing like he is today, looking where he is today because this is the rocksupposedly and that is the spot. beyond doubt, where he first saw that the confederate lineextended to. now what's the big deal? that's right, exactly. so if he's the confederates,congratulations you got a promotion. so if he's the confederates and i'm sickles, whyis this a bad place to be? [the guns are facing in the other direction] that's right, where'sthe enemy? [on your flank] that's right, he's somewhat on the side of me and behind me.uh oh! that's what you call in laymen’s

term the pucker factor. and so what does warrendo? he sends a courier down to the valley to get reinforcements. he first goes to sickles.sickles says i ain't got anything, i'm too thin. well he doesn't say that, he says iain't got nothing. but he is too thin. so warren, his aide goes on to another commander,this time to sykes who happens to be standing there. general george sykes is the commanderof the 5th corps. and sykes says okay i've got control of my entire corps here i'll justdetach a brigade. this is how you get lucky. that aide when you have once again corps,division, brigade, regiment, regiment, division, brigade, corps, how that's supposed to workis sykes sends a message to the division commander in this instance barnes, barnes picks outa brigade commander, the brigade commander

has to find four colonels, the four colonelshave to find ten captains, and the ten captains have to find the sergeants. twenty sergeantsa piece. and they get the privates motivated. there is a lag time. that courier goes gallopingoff from general sykes with orders to detach a brigade. he comes across as that courieris galloping along a brigade commander. corps, division, brigade. we're skipping a step here.he comes across a brigade commander named strong vincent, 26 years old. he stops, hesays what are your orders? you can imagine the lather on the courier’s horse and everything.he goes, what are your orders!? and the guy says i have an order i need to find generalbarnes. vincent insists that the courier give him his orders and the orderly says sykeswishes for a brigade to be sent to that hill

and this is where you get lucky. vincent takesthe initiative to march his brigade here. to cut through the army red tape and to starthis troops on this march here. so in a nutshell what is everything that i've told you so far?strong vincent, his four regiments are marching this way, the confederates are stepping offover here in the distance behind me and it becomes a race against time to get here tolittle round top. and i don't think i'm giving away too many endings when i tell you thatthe union army is going to win the race, but i probably will surprise you by saying theyprobably only won the race by ten or fifteen minutes. it was that close. and hypotheticallyif vincent hadn't taken the initiative it could have been a different thing, but that'sthe breaks you get in a battle, you have to

get in a battle. yes, sir? [how long wouldit take them to go] how long would it have -- well i can't answer how long the delaytime would have been. it would depend on how much further that courier would have to goand then the division commander would have to come back and find vincent and you know,it would depend on the distance. i would say that in order to get if everything was concise,in order to get something moving if everything was readily available from start to finishyou were probably looking at twenty to thirty minutes. well you know, welcome to gettysburg.it's better that they started when they did, how about that? some of you need to quit givingaway the story. vincent did not receive a promotion that day. no more soup for you!any other questions? none? [the situation

that longstreet is countermarching over therei did read something where mclaws and hood's division would be in the lead and that's whythey took the time for laws to do the swing around]. there is a point yes. what he's basicallysaying is corps, division, brigades. there are two divisions in longstreet's corps. that'sgoing to be mclaws's and hood's. and mclaws's was leading the march. what is the benefitof being on the front end of a march and the problem with being on the tail end of themarch? well, the snake effect yes, but what are you eating? dust! that's why you wantto be first. i don't know if they swapped it off or if it was always by seniority, butit is argued that mclaws's was supposed to be first that day. i would think the circumstancesof the moment would dictate that you just

did the most expedient thing, but that's notreally the big picture to me. the thing about longstreet's countermarch is he should haveknown about that darn hill. here's the hill right over here, still standing here, likea hill. that uh -- the one thing he should have reconnoitered it! you're going to betaking 15-18,000 men on this countermarch and you don't know what way you're going totake them. that's the little thing that should have been dealt with. he's too big a generalnot to have known that. yes? [the artillery that's over by blackhorse tavern - didn'tthe artillery already go over that hill?] the artillery went around it, but the bigdebate was if he's the hill right here and i'm coming up to hill alright, you might notgo over it but instead of going over it why

don't you just go around it? which is whatthe artillery did? alexander, the artillery commander never understood why the infantrydidn't follow him, but that's the little things that get you. stuff happens. there you go,aren't you nice? [laughter] fairly good group i would say, yes? any others? okay, one otherthing before we get to -- well, my blue-clad friend. yeah, i remember you. stand up herewith me. and don't shoot me. this is the closest i've been to a yankee in months. so the confederatesare coming up here and they're starting to get into this area. you're going to be a confederateokay? for a moment. [awww] well you don't have to cry about it. [everybody has theircross to bear]. okay. i don't know what to say and that's a rare thing. okay let's saythat i represent one division. corps, division,

brigade regiment. we're the two divisionsfrom longstreet’s corps that's coming up here. he's hood’s division i'm mclaws’sdivision. now with these two divisions sitting right up here the original plan was for meto come up and attack first. and then hood to join in behind me. so what they were goingto do to orient. i know everybody can see, but the pennsylvania memorial is off here.or to the camera's right. what we're going to do is walk out and swing this way and whatare we going to do? we're going to hit the union line at right angles. when we get uphere, ladies and gentleman, we find dan sickles in front of us and mclaws, like you said sir,is very hot about the attack. longstreet is not physically, personally in the field, he'sat the back, he hadn't made it to the front

yet. mclaws is saying hey! boss! i got allthese federals in front of me. i can't do what my orders are. i can't perform my orders,i can't execute them. longstreet says attack. longstreet's in a foul mood. he says attack.mclaws says i can't do it. longstreet sends back word attack now, lee wants you to attack.mclaws gets ready to attack. longstreet makes it to the front and he calls it off at thelast minute. what happens is they reverse. instead of me going first, now he's goingto go first. so hood is going to step out and i'm going to stand right here. so whatis hood doing? here's the union army, here's sickles, here's hood, here's mclaws, here'sonce again hood right there. hood is going to end up being the right hook and mclawsis going to be the left jab. hood is going

to come in here and find the end of the unionline. the great thing about the battlefield in preserving it is you get to make the samedecisions. go over there to that observation tower and stand here. you can't see devil'sden. so what does longstreet have to do? he knows the union line is somewhere over herebut he doesn't know exactly where so he sends out hood to find it. right hook. and that'swhat's going to be coming right at little round top. [inaudible] the original plan wasfor the confederates to anchor upon emmitsburg road and to use that as a guide mark to advanceagainst the union flank like a swinging door but they have to alter the plan. so insteadof a swinging door they break it up into two punches. does that make sense? so it's twomoving parts here. [so that actually created

confusion along the confederates]. sickleswould argue after the war that his move thwarted robert e. lees attack plan. sickles wouldargue in lawyer talk that he shielded little round top by occupying devil's den. [manyexperienced west point] that's probably what got him in the end. what i think happenedand once again sickles never admits any guilt, sir is that he got out there and he thoughthe could perform his original orders. he probably thought he had enough men to connect withthe rest of the union army. now like i said, when he moves out there, these rebs aren'there. it's a whole lot better position when the rebs are behind those three red barnsand it's a whole lot worse position when the rebs are over here. so it's a moment in timeas to when he makes the decision. but sickles

obfuscates that too because he says he knewlongstreet was coming so there you go, there's your gettysburg conundrum. good luck figuringit all out. sickles knew that longstreet was going to come. okay, let's take a break, we'regoing to cut the film at this point for our youtube visitors right now and we're goingto walk over the southern end of little round top and we're going to continue the actionas we bring up johnny reb and billy yank and get down to the fighting on little round top.let's go! i had a small stop right here that i wanted to go out and show you. if you wantto come back through here or you want to see it right now. this is hazlett's battery, whichi'm getting a little bit out of order as far as the fighting but these guns were manhandledup here after strong vincent's men were in

position, that's off to my left or directlyto your front. the reason that i stopped here is because before there were monuments andsidewalks up here they actually came out and they started to mark this area by chiselingin the rocks. and hazlett is later going to go down and one of the first markers on thisbattlefield is actually behind that little monument. etched behind there. now the parkservice didn't do this, but somebody came back in and painted in the letters and youcan see that right there in that area. that's how you start getting places marked out hereon this field. graffiti is new markings. old graffiti is now historic. there's severalrock carvings on the battlefield, but you can find stuff like that on the gettysburgbattlefield. there's also a gentleman named

weed who was hit. this is his picture righthere as you pan over here. weed is going to get hit by one of the confederates on thishill and when he goes down that confederate knew he had gotten himself a big dog whenhe shot himself a big dog what's going to happen then? yup, another big dog is goingto come along. so he sat there, and if this is the same soldier, which i bet it is, hewaited until somebody came to help weed and that would be hazlett, and guess what he did?he dropped hazlett right on top of him. does anybody know weed's last words? “i am asdead as julius caesar.” [laughter] what'd you expect? he was a roman. nevermind. hehad leaves in his hair, bald dude. kind of funny? no? in the immortal words of formerlicensed guide blake chambers, weed gets whacked.

that's for you, blake. alright, let's go rightover here [where is the 16th michigan?] the 16th michigan we're going down to it. is everybodyin? is everybody in? the ceremony's about to begin. it'd be cool if you could call thatone. okay. now we're standing right on the, i guess you could say southern edge. the south'soff to my right here, your left, as far as the crowd. right down here below me is themonument to the 16th michigan and because we met at the warren statue, we're going togo about the deployment of this line in backwards motion, not that it really matters. the 16thmichigan, we think, was the last regiment to come into line, brigade, regiment. so whatam i doing? i'm moving down from the big picture and we're moving down to small picture. strongvincent's brigade of four regiments, brigade,

regiment, is going to be coming up here onthis hill and facing south. a lot of people are surprised by that? they would have thoughtthat vincent would have been facing this way, towards the west. but the rebels are swingingin from behind the union army. so to speak. so these federals are actually facing thisway and this is the end of the union line for this moment in time. the right flank ishould say. so the union men are in position. and coming out of that wood line down thereis none other than the 4th and 5th texas, 4th alabama right over here. and you knowtexans; hard-headed people. and they like to fight. the texans are some of the bestsoldiers in robert e. lee's army. and what are they going to do? they're going to takea look up this hill and they're going to think,

my gosh we're in for it now. but they're goingto retreat back into that wood line and they're going to reform their ranks, and they're goingto come on with that rebel yell, that eerie rebel yell. now if you're thinking about napoleonictactics out here, where'd your pistol go? if you're thinking about napoleonic tacticsand what do they do? they put men in two ranks, don't they? first rank, second rank, out here.if you're thinking about napoleonic tactics, do you think that that's going to work onthis hill? no. so what are the soldiers going to have to do? they're going to have to become--every soldier is going to have to become a general. every soldier is basically goingto be on his own hook. are the officers going to be out here trying to command them? yeah.are they going to be sending them up and down

the hill? yes. but the command and controlof their units is very poor because these soldiers are going to get hunkered down behindthese rocks, these very boulders which we're surrounded by today. that's one of the coolthings about gettysburg, about little round top is that these rocks were right here in1863. these texans start moving from rock to rock and from bush to bush and they startfighting these federals. and the fighting grows to a crescendo. there are only roughlyabout 150-180 michiganders down here on the end of this ridge. very small regiment. andtheir line as i said ends right there. now, face this way sir, if he is the michigan troopsand i am the confederates, i'm going to hit him and we're going to start fighting andthen what am i going to do? i'm going to start

sliding to what? why do i want to be here?that's right. i outflank him. i crossed the t on him. he can't shoot this way and that'sexactly what the texans are going to do. as patton would say they're going to hold himby the nose. so the texans start moving up through here behind me and the michigan menstart to fall back right here to where we're standing along this crest. the union lineis unraveling. at that moment ladies and gentleman, to back up a little bit, now union reinforcementscome up, weed's brigade. actually one regiment from weed's brigade, the 140th new york andit is so close, these texans are almost on the top of the hill. it is so close that thenew yorkers don't have time to deploy into battle line. they literally charge as a mobbasically down the hill and hit the texans

and push them back off the crest on this rightflank. and save it. they don't get the credit that the 20th maine does, but once again theunion line, the union army has gotten very lucky, right at the last minute. you couldn'twrite a play better than that out here. any questions? [why don't they get the credit?chamberlain] it starts with the why didn't they get the credit is the question? theydo get the credit, to a certain extent. patty o'rorke has a restaurant named after him.o'rorke's statue over here has basically a gold nose and why is that? that's for goodluck. and good luck to you. and so they think since o'rorke's luck got ran out that youcould rub his luck off on you. but no, the reason they don't get the credit is becausestarting with the author michael shaara chose

chamberlain as one of his focus points. andwhat is the other thing? if you're going to be historical you need a character that'sgoing to live. o'rorke's not going to make it. but he saves this end of the union line.any other questions? what do you think? your mother is so proud of you. i know, it's notcool. okay, what we're going to do then is i'm going to come back up we're going to aboutface and i'm going to take you down my secret, secret path and we're going to wind our wayon down to the 20th maine and our last stop. matt. this is matt. it's another lovely dayhere at gettysburg. the question was: was the movie gettysburg filmed here? parts ofit. a lot of the scenes were filmed behind that longstreet's observation tower. rememberthat tower i told you about? it's actually

on private land back behind there. the thingthat you couldn't realize and i can't describe is that hollywood, when they set a scene like,that if you turn the camera one way it's cemetery ridge and pickett's charge. if you turn itthe other way it's little round top and it's all within like the same area how they cameout. now they would come on the battlefield and get shots for instance yes they filmedsome of those shots on little round top. if you've got frame by frame on your dvd if youlook closely some of the monuments you can see they've covered with camo net in the background,but they really blend in they look like trees or something back there, but the physical,the opposing lines was done off the park, but for instance when pickett's charge walksout across the field they shoot that scene

as the confederates start across. and thenthey film the actual fighting at another location. the scene with robert e. lee, martin sheen--i used to in the old visitors center, they played it continuously in the bookstore, soi couldn't see it physically but i got to the point where i could tell what scene wason based on the music. and i would get to the point where i could walk in there at theexact moment that the men come out to cheer robert e, lee and they're like -- lee's likethis you know. aw, i could just stand there [laughter]. like that. that scene was notplanned. it actually when martin sheen came out on the field the reenactors rushed himand the director said my gosh we've got to get this scene so they filmed it. pretty cool.[so they were caught up in the moment kinda?]

they were caught up in the moment and theyput it in the script. [you should see some of the faces on them when they're raisingtheir muskets - they're there]. yeah. it's cool. we're now standing in the area of the20th maine and we'll get around and focus on the monument in just a second. what didi say at the beginning? we were talking about history and how layers of history come upand how our views of the battle and of sickles and chamberlain and warren and all these peoplechange over time. this place is one of the best examples on the battlefield. before themovie came out, this area which is all cleared out through here, it's not really any grassor shrubs. this area before the movie came out looked just like the rest of these woods.but when the movie came out, we started getting

a lot more traffic, and now we have to catchup with the times and we're undergoing a study about how to rehab widen the trails take trailsaway where to put them where not. the wear and tear on the hill. this is an area thatwe have to catch up with. now historically speaking, 151 years ago strong vincent wouldlater be killed that day but before he was killed he brought joshua chamberlain overhere personally leading the 20th maine in front of the column and vincent said to chamberlainhold this ground at all hazards. what does that mean? at all costs. what does that notallow you to do? you have no option to retreat. hold this ground at all options. the 20thmaine. chamberlain knows that he is do or die right here. now joshua chamberlain doesn'treally need any introduction. joshua chamberlain

is a well-read man before the war. he is aprofessor of philosophy and rhetoric at bowdoin college in maine. my first tour out here onlittle round top i had an alumnus from bowdoin college, and i in my true southern accentsaid bowdoin, because you know, bowdoin. bobby out here. not spelled exactly the same way.anyway i said bowdoin, and i thought this person was going to keel over right on theground in front of me. very hazardous, you understand. so it's bowdoin college. he'sa professor. he has no prior military experience. but what can he do? he can read. and obviouslyhe's not a dunce. so he rises up through the ranks because he is a well-educated man. andyou know what? the intangible about chamberlain, which you can never put on paper, is thatchamberlain is a natural leader. people like

chamberlain. chamberlain leads from the frontand he's got the right touch with his men. he is a person that we will never see againin the scenes of american history. why? because you just never see someone come out of thecivilian ranks, professor for that matter, come out of the ranks and rise up to be amajor general. this won't happen. well i don't foresee it. chamberlain is ordered to holdthis line. he's got about 300 men through here. coming through these woods and there'salready fighting occurring over here with the texans and the 16th michigan and the 44thnew york, et cetera. coming through these woods is those alabamians. remember i toldyou longstreet argued to wait on one last brigade of alabamians? this is the same menand these alabamians comprising the 15th primarily,

that we're looking at today under the commandof william c. oates, have just climbed big round top, come over the summit, and are nowdescending into the saddle between little round top and big round top. they have alreadyundergone a march of roughly twenty miles to get here and then they did another fivemile countermarch to get into position to attack. and to top it all off, they were outof water so they sent the canteen runners off when they were beginning the attack andthe canteen runners didn't come back by the time they set off their attack so they gointo this attack with no water. in july. wearing thick cotton, thick wool cotton uniforms.think you've got it bad? and brogans, their shoes. so anyway, william c. oates is theexact opposite of chamberlain, from a different

background. oates grows up in pike county,alabama which is sparsely populated. his father is a tavern owner. oates runs away from homeafter his father thrashes him, at age 16 he runs away for several months. he comes backi guess him and his father made amends, he becomes a school teacher. must have been awell-read guy despite being in the country. he becomes a school teacher and then at hisfather's tavern one night he gets into a fight with the man. and he beats him up so bad witha wooden mallet that he thinks he's killed him. this is around when he was 18. he leavestown and he goes to texas. he sets off across texas and according to his memoirs he hasseveral adventures mostly doing odd jobs as a painter, carpenter et cetera. he said hehad luck with cards. he says in one texas

town, nobody famous, he got into an argumentwith a local gunfighter and the next day him and that gunfighter had decided to meet intrue old-west fashion with the draw on the streets. and that night before the sun cameup his father showed up and told him two important things. one, he hadn't killed that guy inalabama and he could come back home. and two, he had best clear out by dawn. and oates wassmart enough to do that because oates figured that guy would have killed him; he was nogunfighter. now oates comes back home, he starts teaching again, and then he startsstudying law. i think he's admitted to the bar in 1858 or 9, so he is a learned man,so to speak. more importantly, as far as his military career, he's a captain in the localmilitia, that'd be like the national guard.

and he knows basic drills. and so when thoselocal boys go off to war, who do they elect as their official officer? him. and by seniorityand attrition oates and of course wanting the job, oates works himself up through theranks until on this battlefield he's leading the entire regiment as a colonel having startedout as a captain. now oates is coming down through here and he can hear the firing offthrough here to his left my left. he can't see anything but he knows there's somethinghappening. now he wanted, he desperately wanted to stay on big round top. his men were tired,tuckered out, obviously dehydrated et cetera. but word came back to push ahead, push theattack. hood wants to push the attack, the division commander. so oates rousts his alabamiansand they set off down this hill. now he can

hear the firing, he can maybe see the smokerising up over here, and he knows that the yankees have to be close, but he's not exactlysure where they are. when he comes out. when you look down here ladies and gentlemen intothis area i want you to use your imagination to take away these cars, take away the road.what i want you to put back in with your imagination are the trees and the rocks. and those alabamiansare coming through there, and about the time they hit the road or maybe on the oppositeside of it, there's a blinding flash of light in this growing darkness in these woods. thatblinding flash of light is what? [chamberlain's men?] chamberlain's men firing those 300 musketswhich illuminate the forest and the bullets start zipping in here. you could hear theimpact on the bodies. most of them were probably

fired too high though. you could hear thericocheting off the trees and the rocks and so forth. oates is going to back up the 15thalabama and as best he can in those dense woods, he is going to start to dress his lines.and once he gets his lines dressed he is going to come out here and he's going to put tannerin front and we're going to go right at them. hitting them straight ahead. all right, sooates starts to hit this line. the maine men redouble their firing. the alabamians startto get behind these boulders. they talk about being behind these rocks down here and sothey reload from behind some of these boulders and they start shooting up here at chamberlain'smen. i can't tell you how many attacks were made by oates that day. combat is a tunnelvision affair. because if me and tanner were

standing here that day, what he perceivesas an attack i may not perceive as an attack. it may just be a crescendo and firing andan ebb to the firing. it's kind of like a classroom if you remember the noise levelto that it rises and falls right up here. so veterans say a lot of different numberof attacks. so what is happening is that there's continuous pressure being put on chamberlain'smen. now what did the texans do over here on the union flank? the other union flank?they moved left. over here oates is going to move right because he can feel it. he canfeel that the union line has got to be around here somewhere. so he's going to start sliding.now chamberlain, let's be yankees, is standing up here his men and they're firing like thisdown at the alabamians down into this area.

as chamberlain is focused on the threat that'sin his immediate front, an officer comes to him a messenger comes to him and he says thatthe confederates are trying to turn his flank. in other words, if we're the federals they'retrying to get up here and cross the t on them. hit them from this way in this area. that'snot going to give chamberlain too much joy. but what are his orders? hold the ground atall hazards. so this is where chamberlain starts to exert leadership on a grand scale.we have two lines here, me and tanner. he will tell tanner in the first line to stayput, keep firing in this direction. the second line will slide to the left and turn at rightangles, like an l. you stay straight tanner, what are you doing? he's a good kid. so chamberlainturns his line like this. right? with the

front being here and the flank being overhere. and that's where we're not going far but we're going to walk right over to theleft flank and continue the fighting. so right over here is the flank marker for the 20thmaine and it's got an l on it. this means left flank. this is the end of the union lineand a few feet. but this is the end of the union line on july 2nd. this is where chamberlainbends back facing this way to face the confederates. and he'd only been here for a matter of timebefore oates and those alabamians start charging up this way too. it is an unenviable positionfor the maine men because now they're caught in a crossfire because they're getting bulletsfrom each direction as they're coming out through here, and the alabamians are goingto come up through here and drive the maine

men back. it's a see-saw battle that flowsback and forth on top of this hill. so where you're standing and sitting today literallyladies and gentlemen there was wounded and dead soldiers in this area and more and moreas the fighting continues to grow. there were pools of blood on these very rocks 151 yearsago. it is a momentum driven battle where the rebels will drive the yankees back andthe yankees will drive the rebels back, and they'll keep repeating the process, but it'sa stalemate and oates needs to break it. so he picks maybe twenty or thirty men and hedetaches them to go around the end of the union line and come in behind. and that ladiesand gentlemen will cause some confusion, but back here where you see the gentlemen in theblue shirt has positioned himself so strategically

right here. that is known as the oates rock.that is reportedly where the flagbearer of the 15th alabama and oates's brother, theyare going to get to that rock right there and later many years after the battle, oatesis going to want to put up a monument to his men there because his brother is mortallywounded there and of course a lot of his men died in this area. chamberlain will writehim back and say that's all fine and good but you never got there. so you see wherethe gentleman is there's no monument. the battle see-saws back and forth. people arebecoming fatigued. soldiers are running out of ammunition. the maine men are coming upand they are rifling through the cartridge boxes of the dead and the wounded, tryingto get everything they can. chamberlain knows

that his men are about out of gas. williamc. oates knows that his men are about out of gas. it's growing dark. chamberlain andoates don't know where they are but chamberlain has more friends than oates does. oates isthe end of the confederate line. people don't think about that. he's the end of the line.he has no support off to his right and he's starting to get bullets from his rear. andhe doesn't know who that is, how many they are. so, here we get into once again; gettysburgand layers of history. william c. oates is going to write and say i decided to withdraw.and chamberlain is going to write that i ordered an attack. can both men be right when theywrite? so what ends up happening? chamberlain is going to order a bayonet attack and thisis not even clear. come up here tanner and

face towards the front again. remember thelines are facing at right angles to each other. in chamberlain's version of events, and likethe movie portrays, chamberlain is going to order bayonets. i don't know if they had dramaticmusic in the background as they did it or not but chamberlain is going to order bayonetsand he is going to order his left wing under major spears to pivot like a door, to swinglike a door and come flush with the right wing and then charge down the hillside. chamberlainwould say they weren't withdrawing that he drove them off; oates would say he's withdrawing.who knows? so in chamberlain's version of events they're going to swing out here andmake that attack. remember one thing about chamberlain, for better or worse chamberlainis a prolific writer. he is a good writer.

you want to read some good prose, go to thevisitors center and buy one of his books. that man can write. he is vivid. you feellike you were there. but chamberlain really put the glory back into war. nothing wrongwith that but he remembered the heroism and bravery of his men seeing these scenes andboth sides fighting valiantly. his second in command major spears resents that afterthe war. spears doesn't remember glory and war. spears remembers pain and suffering andloss. and spears resents chamberlain trying to make something out of it. take that intocontext, spears remembers on july 2nd that he received no such order from joshua chamberlain.where'd the right flank go? he received no such order from chamberlain to swing his leftline and dash down the hill. spears writes

that what happened was that the right flank,tanner here charged forward, and he saw the american flag go off in that direction andspears thought to himself “maybe we ought to do something” so he had the left wingadvance too. do you see how i'm saying the same thing though but it's in a slightly differentterm? there's no dramatic pivot, according to spears. basically both halves of this regimentcharge almost simultaneous to each other, but it's not as dramatic as chamberlain wouldhave it. the bottom line is the bottom line though. chamberlain the 20th maine and thosemen drive back the alabamians. he could have broken. the maine men could have broken andthey were close to doing that on several times. they did not. the line was held, beyond adoubt. chamberlain and his men held the line

and it is one of the most dramatic, the mostcourageous, and one of the must-win, biggest must-win situations for the union army onjuly 2nd. you definitely don't want in this area a confederate flag flying from littleround top. cause you know what those southerners would do to this barbecue joint over here?they'd ransack that thing real fast. that'd probably cost them the victory actually. iknow what to do, let me get some wood! yes? yes. a couple of them. but they're not goingto cause the major damage. you're correct, some of these guns did fire on pickett's charge.let me finish the story though before we get to july 3rd. you had a question. [is spearsa professional soldier? a west pointer?] i don't know. [the reason i'm asking is perhapsthe two accounts differ, you had a learned

educated non-professional soldier who glamorizesand glorifies; the professional soldier would look at it as what it was.] i'm repeatingit for the microphone. i know everybody heard you but, basically he's saying that you mayhave had a professional soldier under spears, he's a dreamer and so forth. beyond a doubtchamberlain makes, i don't say he does it intentionally, but chamberlain benefits fromhis war service. he becomes governor of maine. in fact, william c. oates is going to be governorof alabama. we've got a president over here in gettysburg who benefited greatly from militaryservice. so i'm not criticizing chamberlain for that. chamberlain would come up and ithink to a certain extent he thought spears over-exaggerated. and here's where we getinto who's right and so forth. maybe he's

taken a little bit more of the lion's share.but you can't discount spears's personal animosity. apparently they didn't particularly get alongor anything like that. it wouldn't be the first two men who never got along in history.but anyway, you know the truth is probably in the middle out here. with chamberlain.the main thing is though that once again chamberlain is going to keep his cool. a lot of peoplewould have broken. but chamberlain is going to hold onto this for the best. chamberlainis-- right. i think, but you're basically pointing out between professional militaryand non-professional. you also have the core of who you are. we all take stress very differently.you know some people. you know yourselves better than i do you know how you react tostress. in certain situations i react pretty

good; i think in certain situations i don't.in this particular situation chamberlain did. the other thing about chamberlain that youcould argue though, to push back, because i've been maybe a little too harsh on chamberlain.to push back a little bit, chamberlain earns his stars. the only reason he is a major generalis because they thought he was going to die. he received a ball at petersburg that wentthrough both pelvises and on the way through it cut his urethra, and only because he wasa major general they did experimental surgery and spliced his urethra back together witha glass tube. and he would have complications, it never healed, i think it leaked, you canimagine what that would do, but it caused him a lot of pain and suffering for the restof his life and he would actually, some think,

die of complications from that in the early1900s-- 1912, 1914 something like that. yeah. but he was not supposed to be at appomattox.they thought, “he's gone up the spout,” as the soldiers would say. so definitely onething, whether you agree or disagree with joshua chamberlain; nobody can call him acoward. he stood there after he was shot. i believe he had the american flag in hishand, if you want it even more dramatic, and he leaned against either his flag or his sword.i think maybe he stuck his sword in the ground but he leaned against something and held himselfup and urged his men on before he collapsed on the ground. it's crazy. i don't know ifi could do that. i just don't know. [but you just did]. yeah, i know i go that one, soi just did it. well, all right. don't undersell

myself, yes, exactly, thank you tanner forthe vote of confidence. i'm also skinny too so i could turn sideways right? all the bulletswould miss me. [how big was chamberlain?] uhh. [he looks like a bigger man]. that'scause of his mustache! his mustache out here. which you know you get out into this areaand chamberlain when he came back here the 20th maine monument is right down there, butchamberlain when he came back here for the monument dedication basically they put themonument there because that's where they said the two wings tied together. chamberlain gotback here twenty or thirty years after the war and he said, “i don't remember this.i don't remember the flag being here.” and he said, “this is where it was,” so that'swhere the monument is. of memory and men.

now to close it off, let me say somethingto tie it all in. don't walk out of here getting the impression that i am dismissing joshuachamberlain's actions. i'm just trying to put it in realistic terms for you, and don'tthink i'm dismissing what chamberlain pulled off on the left flank. the one thing thati want you to be aware of, and i think is overshadowed by the movie, is that chamberlain'saction here is one of a series of events that occur on july 2nd. it is not the single eventthat occurs that day that saves the union army. it is a number of events. i can pointyou to a lot of things, the 137th new york on culp's hill, the 1st minnesota at the pennsylvaniamonument with 80% casualties for the minnesota men. there is a lot of heroism on this fieldthat eventually is going to lead to union

victory. the confederates and robert e. leeare going to hurl everything they've got at george meade or everything lee can get intothe battle that day and they're going to come this close from winning it. little round topcaptures the imagination of the american public still today because, just like pickett's charge,it's one of these great “what ifs?” what could have happened up here? and it is alwaysa privilege and i hope it is an honor for you also to come out here and walk the sameground and in the same footsteps of these brave men. thank y'all very much. [applause]