DEAR SIR: Your letter has just reached me through the War Department, and it gives me pleasure to answer such of the questions it asks as I can. I enclose a copy of my Report of the Battle of Gettysburg, which is confined exclusively to what I knew of events then taking place. The only error in it I have ever discovered, is that Birney did not close the gap I asked him to, near the battery on the left of his line. Through that gap the enemy in part forced his way. The Divisions of the Fifth Corps moved from the Baltimore pike where it crossed Rock Creek, as follows: First Division, Second Division, Third Division. About 3 P. M. on the 2d of July the Corps Commanders were at the headquarters of General Meade. After consultation, I was directed by him to establish the Fifth Corps on the left of the general line of the army, terminating at Little Round Top, and hold that part of the field. The crest of the valley sweeping from Cemetery Ridge around to the left and embracing Little Round Top was the general line of battle adopted by the commanding General. The position of the Third Corps was not known to me, and no staff officer was given me to find it out. In looking for it, I found the gap spoken of in my Report, in consequence of which, I sought the commander of the troops nearest it, and asked that it be closed, promising to fill the interval he might make with my own troops. To accomplish this, I hastened to the leading Brigades, Sweitzer and Tilton, First Division, and posted them on the edge of a wood in front of part of Birney's line, to cover the interval I expected him to make. How Vincent got to Round Top I do not know, unless hearing my aide-de-camp deliver the order for the Corps to take the left of the line, he made his way there of his own soldierly instinct. As I conducted the two leading brigades across the Taneytown pike to the position I gave them, I do not remember to have seen Vincent's troops. I was at the head, and he at the rear of the column, and a sputtering fire having commenced, I was anxious to get the foremost brigades in their place. The interference with orders given by me to my troops occurred only in Warren's hurrying up Weed's Brigade to Round Top, which was very judicious, and an interference of General Sickles by which General Weed was withdrawn in part from Round Top, and placed en route towards the right, until I met him, and at once returned him to his place. Watson's Battery of regular artillery was likewise appropriated by Sickles without my knowledge, in consequence of which it was for a time lost. General Ayres took position to the right of Little Round Top until I ordered him to attack in the direction of the 'Den,' and Crawford was to be the right rear of Ayres until I moved him to the attack at a later hour. You are right about two Brigades of the First Division being out towards the peach orchard; I placed them there myself, and for the reason given. The rocky glen did not admit of troops being posted across it. If the left of the line of the Third Corps had not been thrust out into the valley, there would have been no interval near the glen, and I do not believe the enemy would have made the headway he did, but, being there, the glen enabled Longstreet to use it as a cover, and gave him power to turn the flank of the Third Corps. Had not the Fifth Corps held Round Top and the ground adjacent, nothing would have stopped him from reaching the Baltimore turnpike. Our Corps never got the credit it deserved that day. It simply saved defeat, and every fair-minded soldier knows it. The military politicians did not want one of their pets to suffer, and were strong enough to uphold 'their own.'
I have thus, Captain, replied to your letter as far as I am able. I cannot tell you much not known to you before. I am, Captain,
SOURCE: Oliver Willcox Norton, The Attack and Defense of Little Round Top,Gettysburg, July 2, 1863, pp. 293-5
