Breastworks on Little Round Top Hill, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 3 July 1863

Breastworks on Little Round Top Hill, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 3 July 1863. Albumen print of the Union defensive position at Little Round Top on the battlefield at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, USA, by Alexander Gardener (1821-1882) from a negative produced by Timothy H O'Sullivan (1840-1882). Little Round Top Hill saw some of the fiercest fighting of the Battle of Gettysburg, the decisive engagement of the war. On 2 July the Confederate 15th Alabama Regiment were repulsed by the Union 20th Maine Infantry, defending the hill. Defeat at Gettysburg marked the end of General Robert E Lee's planned invasion of the north. The caption reads: Names [of the dead] are now roughly cut on the rocks. From the album assembled by John Downes who visited all the major American Civil War sites in 1867. ©SSPL/National Media Museum