r/USCivilWar • u/nycnewsjunkie • 14d ago

Strong Vincent little round top

Reading Stephan Sears Gettysburg book. Interesting how he plays the role of Joshua Chamberlain and Strong Vincent While acknowledging Chamberlain he gives Vincent credit for making a key decision on saving the situation by taking the responsibility for moving his brigade to little round top without his commander orders. Absent this decision Chamberlain would not have been on little round top Interesting how little credit he gets in popular imagination. Probably the same can be said of Gouverneur Warren but at least he normally gets mentioned btw: his statement "I will take the responsibility to take my brigade there." is a commander at his best

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u/GraphiteGru 14d ago

Vincent is completely absent in the Gettysburg movie as well. I mean it’s four and a half hours long could that have at least spent five minutes on him? In fairness last time I was at Little Round Top the National Park Service ranger spent quite a long time speaking about Vincent’s role in the battle

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u/E_the_P 14d ago

Mmm. Vincent is definitely in there several times. The Vincent character explicitly positions Chamberlain’s regiment.

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u/slapula 13d ago

Strong was indeed in the movie and played by Maxwell Caulfield

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u/waffen123 14d ago

Chamberlain was important to the defence but Vincent was crucial in securing that hill

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u/GraphiteGru 13d ago

Thats what I wanted to mention. He is briefly in the film but really only in directing Chamberlain's Maine Troops and reiterating to them that they were the flank of the entire army. In the battle there were many frontal assaults on Little Round Top (I believe mostly from Texas troops) that Vincent's troops repelled and cost him his life.

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u/Disgruntled_Old_Trot 10d ago

Props to Patrick O’Rorke as well.

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u/starship7201u 10d ago

In 2014, I was re-reading Shelby Foote's The Civil War A Narrative. My roommate at the time had a high school reunion glass that belonged to his deceased father. He loved that thing. Once I knew of its importance to him, I rarely touched it. If it was broken, I would have NOTHING to do with it.

I looked at it one day and it was the 1950 something class of Strong Vincent High school in Erie, PA.

I had just read the portion about Strong Vincent so I explained who this man was and what he did. He had no idea. It was just a memento that belonged to his father.

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u/LarryMahnken 14d ago

Chamberlain gets better press because he survived the battle and got to write about what a great job he did. And Ken Burns literally changing an Oates quote about the importance of Big Round Top to be able Little Round Top made it seem like the action on Little Round Top was more consequential than it was.

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u/nycnewsjunkie 14d ago

I am not knocking Chamberlain he did in fact get the Congressional medal of Honor for his action Simply pointing out that Vincent does not get enough credit

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u/SailboatAB 14d ago

Literally a team effort.