Have you ever had to make a call that nobody actually gave you the authority to make?
That’s the position Strong Vincent found himself in on the afternoon of July 2, 1863. He was 26 years old. A lawyer from Erie, Pennsylvania, before the war…not exactly the résumé you’d expect for the man who ends up deciding whether the Union army holds Gettysburg.
I just spent a day walking Little Round Top for the first part of this on-location series, and the more I stood up there, the more the whole thing came down to about ten minutes.
Here’s the setup. Union engineer Gouverneur Warren looks over at Little Round Top and realizes there’s nobody on it…and if Confederate troops get there first, the whole Union left flank is finished. He needs troops. Now. Vincent’s brigade is marching nearby, technically under orders to go somewhere else. Vincent doesn’t wait for a new order. He just says it: “I will take the responsibility to take my brigade there.”
That’s it. That’s the sentence historians point to when they talk about why Gettysburg went the way it did.
He gets his four regiments up the hill and starts placing them himself…personally walking the line, deciding who goes where. He tells Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine to hold the far left flank no matter what (and we all know how that turned out). Then he heads over to the 16th Michigan on the right, where the line is starting to buckle.
Vincent climbs up on a boulder so his men can see him. He’s got his wife’s riding crop in his hand instead of a sword, waving it as he shouts at his men not to give an inch. A Confederate bullet comes through and hits him in the thigh and groin. He goes down on the hill he wasn’t ordered to defend.
General Meade recommends him for brigadier general that same afternoon and the commission gets dated the next day. Vincent dies five days later, on July 7th, having made one of the more consequential snap decisions of the entire war and never really getting to see what it meant.
His wife had a daughter two months after he died. The Erie school named after him (in Pennsylvania) is still there. So is the spur on the battlefield that carries his name.
I keep coming back to that first line, though…”I will take the responsibility.” No committee, no telegram back to headquarters, no covering himself. Just a guy who looked at a hill and a map and decided somebody had to hold it, and it might as well be him.
I wanted to start here, with the decision, because I don’t think you can understand Little Round Top without understanding the ten minutes before anyone fired a shot. If you are planning a trip to Gettysburg, watch this video, read our full Gettysburg guide, and hit the road!
Intro: 0:00
Gettysburg Visitor’s Center: 2:08
Gettysburg Devil’s Den: 2:35
Strong Vincent Statue: 5:29
Strong Vincent Fell Here: 8:06
Quick Tour of Little Round Top: 9:25
