Strong Vincent and the Defense of Little Round Top

The most consequential decision at the Battle of Gettysburg may have been made by a twenty-six-year-old lawyer from Erie who acted entirely without orders.

Strong Vincent was born in Waterford, just south of here, and built a law practice in Erie before the war. When the shooting started in eighteen sixty-one, he joined the local militia immediately and rose rapidly through the ranks. By the summer of eighteen sixty-three he commanded a brigade of four infantry regiments from Maine, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania.

On the afternoon of July second, eighteen sixty-three, the second day of Gettysburg, Vincent's brigade was moving up when he spotted a crisis unfolding: Little Round Top, the rocky hill on the Union's far left flank, was completely undefended. Confederate troops were racing to take it. If they reached the summit, they could sweep the entire Union line from the flank and potentially end the battle, and perhaps the war, in a single afternoon.

Vincent's superior officer had not yet ordered anyone to Little Round Top. Vincent looked at the situation and made a decision that was technically insubordination. 'I will take the responsibility,' he said, and directed his brigade up the hill without waiting for orders.

His men reached the summit with minutes to spare. In the desperate fighting that followed, the Twentieth Maine, the Eighty-third Pennsylvania, and their sister regiments held the hill through repeated Confederate assaults. Vincent himself stood exposed on a boulder, riding crop in hand, shouting to his men: 'Don't give an inch!'

A bullet struck him in the groin. He died five days later.

He was promoted to brigadier general the day after he was wounded, someone having realized a little late that the decision he made on his own authority had saved the Union left flank. He is buried in Erie. A statue of him stands outside the library on the waterfront.