The peaceful serenity of this tranquil scene belied the hostilities that erupted here late in the day on July 2, 1863. Not realizing that the Union's Third Corps had moved forward to the Emmitsburg Road and Houck's Ridge, General Robert E. Lee planned to have Lt. General Longstreet initiate a series of attacks en echelon, rolling up the Union left flank that he thought terminated further north on Cemetery Ridge.

As the Confederates prepared alone with their thoughts, the men of Hood's Texas Division watched warily from Warfield Ridge for Union activity with a view of Little Round Top which would have looked much like it does today. The cover of trees would not have been as thick as pictured here however, making their positions and movements much more visible to their Union counterparts, especially upon advancing into the open. Big Round Top, to the distant far right in the image above, would briefly serve as the Confederate right flank later in the afternoon when Colonel William Calvin Oates of the 15th Alabama would seek to wrest Little Round Top, the smaller hill to its left, from Colonel Strong Vincent's Union 5th Corps Brigade. From this view, in front of Little Round Top under the cover of the trees, is the Devil's Den with the Wheatfield situated further west.

Lieutenant General James Longstreet, General Lee's most trusted subordinate at Gettysburg, positioned his artillery along Warfield Ridge and pelted the Union positions in Devil's Den to soften up Union lines before their advance. Now a lone gun resting on this quiet hill is only a small reminder of the deadly force used to help remove the hard fighting Federals from their positions throughout Devils Den, Houck's Ridge, and what would be later named the Slaughter Pen and the Valley of Death.

At about 4:00pm on July second, Lieutenant General Longstreet initiated what he would refer to as "the best three hours of fighting ever done by soldiers on any battlefield." Despite the many previous successes of this veteran division, not everyone held the same enthusiasm for the coming assaults. In a letter to General Longstreet years later, Major General John Bell Hood said of the proposed attack, "In fact it seemed to me the enemy occupied a position by nature so strong--I may say impregnable--that, independent of their flanking-fire, they could easily repel our attack by merely throwing and rolling stones down the mountainside as we approached." [7] Some estimates indicate that, on this day, the Confederate Army suffered about 6,000 casualties to the Union's 8,900. Through the trees to the right in the picture above can be seen the crest of Big Round Top.

Click here for a video of the ground over which General Longstreet's Corps would advance.