FEATURE image: Brigadier General Gouverneur Kemble Warren, 1888, by Karl Gerhardt. Gettysburg National Military Park. Author’s photograph taken in April 2006 (65%).

One of Gettysburg’s most famous statues among the park’s many hundreds of monuments, markers and plaques, Gouverneur (his first name, not his title) Kemble Warren (1830-1882) was a civil engineer and U.S Army general from New York. The statue, by Karl Gerhardt (1853-1940) was dedicated in 1888 and is on Little Round Top. Karl Gerhardt was an American sculptor who is famous for the death mask of President U.S. Grant in 1885.

At this spot, on July 2, 1863, General Warren, commander of the Second Army Corps (part of the Army of the Potomac) and its chief engineer, detected Confederate General John Hood’s flanking movement and, recognizing the importance of the undefended position on the left flank of the U.S. Army, directed on his own initiative, the brigade of Colonel Strong Vincent (1837-1863) from Pennsylvania to occupy it minutes before it was attacked. While this action saved the key Union position on Cemetery Ridge, Col. Vincent was carried off the field mortally wounded and died at a nearby farm on July 7, 1863.

The statue was dedicated by veterans of the 5th New York Infantry Regiment (Duryee’s Zouaves). While Little Round Top is famous for the fighting on July 2, 1863, seven men were also killed around these rocks on the morning of July 3, 1863.