re: The action at Gettysburg no one ever talks about (159th anniversary edition)

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You may be thinking about Little Round Top.

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You're both wrong.

Little Round Top never factored into Robert E. Lee's plans for Gettysburg. And the battle that took place there on July 2, while important and intense, is very overplayed in the history of the battle thanks to the 1993 movie and the novel it is adapted from.

Cemetery Hill was the promontory Lee had his sights set on during the Battle of Gettysburg. It was completely open and commanded the entirety of the battlefield and also commanded the Baltimore Pike - Meade's line of retreat and communication. The soldiers who were there said of Cemetery Hill that it "stuck out like a sore thumb."

Lee wanted Ewell to take Cemetery Hill "if practicable" on the afternoon of July 1. However, Ewell found it impractical and had very good reasoning as to why. His first division, that of Robert Rodes, had been mauled north and west of town in the fighting for Oak Ridge/McPherson Ridge. His second division, that of Jubal Early, was spread out all over town trying to corral Union prisoners as well as stamp out what little resistance remained north of town. His third and final division, that of Edward Johnson, wasn't on the field yet and wouldn't be until after night fall. With all of these considerations, Ewell didn't think an attack on Cemetery Hill feasible (and he was probably right).

All that said, Ewell did want to take Culp's Hill on July 1 and, had he done so, it would have made the entire Union position at Gettysburg untenable. Orders went astray, however, and Confederates failed to make an attempt at taking Culp's Hill for several crucial hours - hours in which the hill remained unoccupied. When a Confederate force was finally cobbled together after dark in an attempt to capture Culp's Hill, they were met with resistance while climbing the slope and fell back, thinking they had run into a superior force. In actuality, the Union soldiers doing the firing were only a single regiment (the 19th Indiana). But in the dark they couldn't see just how meager the Union force holding Culp's Hill was. As a result, no further attempts were made to take the position on July 1 and 11,000 Union soldiers in the form of the Twelfth Corps soon began to take position on the hill.