William Swinton, Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac

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[346] moment imminent, for Little Round Top was quite unoccupied. Had Hood known its nakedness, and, massing his whole division on the force that had outflanked Sickles' left, pushed boldly for its rocky summit, he would have grasped in his hand the key of the battle-ground, and Gettysburg might have been one of those fields that decide the issues of wars.

Fortunately, at the time Hood made his attack, General Warren, chief-engineer, happened to reach Little Round Top. The summit of this hill had been used as a signal station, and at the moment of his arrival, the signal-officers suddenly seeing that the enemy had penetrated between Round Top and the left of Sickles' line and was approaching their position, were folding up their flags to leave; but Warren, commanding them to continue waving them, so as to make at least a show on the hill, hastened to seek some force wherewith to occupy this important point. It happened at this pregnant moment that the head of Sykes' column, which had been ordered over to the left, reached this vicinity, and the leading division of this corps, under General Barnes, was then passing out to re-enforce Sickles. General Warren assumed the responsibility of detaching from this force the brigade of Vincent, and this he hurried up to hold the position, while Hazlitt's battery was by enormous labor dragged and lifted by hand up the rocky brow of the hill and planted on its summit. As these events followed in quick succession, it resulted that while that part of Hood's force that had penetrated to the left of the line was approaching the front slope of the Little Round Top, which in a few moments would have been seized by it, other claimants were hurrying up its rear. Vincent's men, thrown forward at the pas de course, and without time to load, reached the crest just as Hood's Texans, advancing in column and without skirmishers, were running to gain it.

Little Round Top—the prize so eagerly coveted by botL combatants—is a bold and rocky spur of the lofty and peaked hill Round Top. It is impossible to conceive a scene of greater wildness and desolation than is presented by