Out of ammunition, Chamberlain orders the bayonet; the 20th Maine sweeps Little Round Top
By late afternoon on July 2, 1863, the Union left flank at Gettysburg hung on a hill nobody had planned to defend. Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine held the extreme end of the line on Little Round Top, and when Colonel William C. Oates's 15th Alabama pressed them back through repeated charges, Chamberlain's men ran out of ammunition. Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge, swinging his line forward like a door on a hinge, and the maneuver broke the Confederate assault and captured a portion of Oates's regiment. The high ground held, and with it, the Union army's flank.
The fight at Little Round Top became one of the most studied small-unit engagements in American military history, enshrined in textbooks at West Point and immortalized by Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Joshua Chamberlain, a classics professor turned colonel, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that afternoon. The ground he held is now among the most visited acres in the United States.
QWho actually started the charge before Chamberlain gave the order?
Lieutenant Holman S. Melcher, positioned near the center of the 20th Maine's line, moved forward on his own initiative as the regiment's ammunition ran out. Chamberlain, seeing the movement begin, seized the moment and turned it into a coordinated right-wheel charge across the entire regiment. It is one of the odder footnotes of the battle: the maneuver now taught as a textbook example of Chamberlain's tactical genius arguably began as one lieutenant's improvisation on the fly.
QWhat was Company B doing while the rest of the regiment charged?
Company B had been detached earlier and positioned behind a stone wall, separate from the main line. As the Alabama troops broke and retreated under the bayonet charge, Company B opened fire into their flank from concealment. The volleys added to the confusion of the Confederate retreat and helped secure the number of prisoners the 20th Maine ultimately captured that afternoon.
QWhy did it take thirty years for Chamberlain to receive his Medal of Honor?
Chamberlain's charge happened in 1863, but the Medal of Honor citation was not issued until 1893. The delay reflects how differently the medal was administered in the war's immediate aftermath, when many valorous actions went undocumented in the moment or were only formally recognized decades later as veterans and historians reconstructed the record. By the time Chamberlain received his medal in 1893, three decades had passed since the events at Little Round Top.
