Alabama Review: Storming Little Round Top: The 15th Alabama and Their Fight for the High Ground, Jul

Storming Little Round Top: The 15th Alabama, and Their Fight for the High Ground, July 2, 1863. By Philip Thomas Tucker. Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2002. 342 pp. $30.00. ISBN 0-306-81146-4.

According to Philip Thomas Tucker, the struggle between the 15th Alabama and 20th Maine Regiments during the Battle of Gettysburg was "the most decisive small unit action" of the Civil War (p. 172). Certainly the 20th Maine and its successful defense of Little Round Top have been celebrated by many writers. Extraordinary exertions by officers and men of the 15th Alabama-who marched over twenty miles to the battlefield, advanced without water on a very hot day, and scaled Big Round Top before clashing with the 20th Maine-have largely been ignored of late. Storming Little Round, Top is Tucker's attempt to balance the scales.

Not surprisingly, the book draws heavily on William C. Oates's classic history of the 15th Alabama, The War Between the Union and the Confederacy (New York, 1905). Tucker incorporates standard accounts by other veterans as well as modern studies of the second day at Gettysburg. These include Mark Perry's Conceived in Liberty: Joshua Chamberlain, William Gates, and the American Civil War (New York, 1997), Morris M. Penny and J. Gary Laine's Law's Alabama Brigade in the War between the Union and the Confederacy (Shippensburg, Penn., 1996), and Harry W. Pfanz's Gettysburg: The Second Day (Chapel Hill, 1987). Unfortunately Tucker makes little use of unpublished manuscripts and letters or reports from official military records. Absence of a bibliography and long passages unmarked by a single footnote are disappointing.

The author opens with a profile of soldiers who marched with the 15th Alabama: their origins, motivation, and experiences. A few statements about cultural diversity in the ranks are arguable, but most have validity. Tucker follows with a chapter on William C. Oates, the regiment's spirited young commander. As a rebellious teen Oates had roamed from town to town, gambling, fighting, and living life on the edge. After coming home to southeast Alabama to pursue an education, he became a respected citizen and community leader. Oates eventually rose to regimental command just before Gettysburg.

Some readers might anticipate fresh insights or an original interpretation of the battle. If so, they will be disappointed. All too soon Tucker is repeating shopworn assertions from Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (New York, 1974) that Robert E. Lee should have heeded General James Longstreet's counsel and "gone to the right" (p. 242). While reminding us that Longstreet denied three requests to reconsider the plan of attack, the author insists on blaming General Lee for Longstreet's obstinacy. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, Tucker suggests that Lee always fought according to preconceived plans and that his inflexibility cost the Confederacy whatever chance it might have had of winning at Gettysburg.

Storming Little Round Top is replete with any number of annoying literary devices. The word "ironically" finds its way into most pages, and the phrase "as fate would have it" is routinely used to explain events. Repetition is another hazard the reader will encounter. The text is peppered with word pairings like "golden opportunity," "pesky sharpshooters," and "crack unit," which are employed like sales slogans. Oft-repeated and simplistic descriptions, such as the "offensive-minded Lee and the defensive-minded Longstreet" (p. 126), reduce these complex and dynamic leaders to mere stereotypes.

Overly dramatic prose tends to trivialize the toil and sufferings of the Alabamians. By late afternoon temperatures were high, and these soldiers went into battle with empty canteens. Tucker quickly transforms the rocky hills of Gettysburg into a tropical rain forest. Oates and his men are soon "gasping for air in the steaming heat" (p. 156). As the blazing sun beats down on them, weary Confederates are "nauseated and dizzy from sunstroke and heat exhaustion" (p. 171), unable to bear the sweltering heat and humidity of Pennsylvania. Drenched in sweat, they are prostrated by fatigue, "sucking in hot air like bellows and breathless in the suffocating heat" (p. 167). These poor boys from the Deep South had never experienced such hot weather!

For a published author of several Civil War books, Tucker seems to have little grasp of basic military conventions. Normally Companies "A" and "B" were assigned to opposite flanks of a regiment. Tucker, however, forms the 15th Alabama in line of battle by company letter order, from "A" through "L." He mentions a non-existent Company "J" (pp. 233, 236) and always renders the name of the regiment's first colonel, James Cantey, as "Gantry."

Perhaps attention to detail was less important because the author intended to target a broad, popular audience. Certainly phrases such as "elite special forces" (p. 139), "intelligence-seeking scouts" (p. 110) and "mind-boggling news" (p. 112) do not usually appear in serious studies. Those who simply want a good story may be entertained. Avid students of Alabama in the Civil War will find little new here.

Alan Pitts

Virginia College

Birmingham, Alabama