The Annals of the Civil War Written by Leading Participants North and South
Alexander Kelly McClure, Ed.

Then, when one-third of their number lay in their bloody track, dead or wounded, and they were exposed in front and flank to an overwhelming fire, and their supporting brigades had gone astray, and there was no sign of positive or strategic co-operation from their comrades, I ordered them to withdraw to the peach orchard that they had wrested from the Third Corps early in the engagement.

This claim has been severely criticised. It can be established by the testimony of every honest and well-informed man who was in that battle. But I relied for my proof upon the official report of General Meade himself. He made this report, it will be remembered, thinking that the whole or greater part of Lee's army had charged his position in the afternoon of the 2d. He says:

The Third Corps sustained the shock most heroically. Troops from the Second were sent by Major General Hancock to cover the right flank of the Third Corps, and soon after the assault commenced. ... The Fifth Corps, most fortunately, arrived, and took position on the left of the Third. Major General Sykes, commanding, immediately sending a force to occupy Round Top Ridge, where a most furious contest was maintained, the enemy making desperate but unsuccessful attempts to secure it. Notwithstanding the stubborn resistance of the Third Corps, under Major General Birney (Major General Sickles having been wounded early in the action), superiority of number of corps of the enemy enabling him to outflank its advanced position, General Birney was compelled to fall back and re-form behind the line originally desired to be held. In the meantime, perceiving the great exertions of the enemy, the Sixth Corps (Major General Sedgwick) and part of the First Corps, to which I had assigned Major General Newton, particularly Lockwood's Maryland Brigade, together with detachments from the Second Corps, were brought up at different periods, and succeeded, together with the gallant resistance of the Fifth Corps, in checking, and, finally repulsing, the assault of the enemy. ... During the heavy assault upon our extreme left, portions of the Twelfth Corps were sent as reinforcements.

To make this specific and positive proof still more conclusive, I may add the testimony of General Meade given before the Committee on the Conduct of the War, in which he says (speaking of this battle of the 2d): “My extreme right flank was then held by a single brigade of the Twelfth Corps, commanded by General Green.” Then the troops opposing my thirteen thousand men (two divisions of my corps) were as follows: Third Corps, eleven thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight; Fifth Corps, ten thousand one hundred and thirty-six; Sixth Corps, fifteen thousand four hundred and eight; Pennsylvania Reserves, four thousand five hundred; Lockwood's Maryland Brigade, two thousand five hundred; total, forty-four thousand four hundred and forty-two. The above figures are taken from the Congressional Report, page 428. To these figures must be added