Of the four issues considered here, Chamberlain's account has been called into serious question at least three times. Especially, and perhaps most importantly, concerning the charge.
He may have ordered a charge, although he later admitted that perhaps he didn't. And the famous right-wheel either did not take place, or, as the evidence would seem to suggest, at least not in the manner that Chamberlain later described.
So is Chamberlain nothing more than a self-made hero rather than the real thing? Does his almost certainly inaccurate account of Little Round Top expose him as a fraud?
Before we address that question, let's turn to another one -
Why?
Why would Chamberlain falsify the record as he appears to have done? What would his motive be for doing so?
Author Glenn LaFantasie may have provided us with the answer. His insights are revealing enough that I've quoted him at length here.
In his excellent article from North & South, LaFantasie proceeds to strip away JLC's carefully constructed persona, and reveals the very human person behind it.
A person deeply affected by the horrors of war, yet who managed, at least on the surface, to "not let the brutality of war torment him." A person who found a way "to shut out the ghastly realities of battle and put its frightening horrors out of reach."
"It was not that the human misery of war failed to touch him," LaFantasie explains. "It was rather that he began to comprehend war from his own perspective, one that enabled him to see it not precisely the way it was, but as he thought it really should be."
For Chamberlain, he says, "war was mostly chivalry and honor." A contest between good and evil, "white knights battling black knights in epic duels that would determine the fate of the United States."
"In his eyes," says LaFantasie, "officers displayed knightly countenances as they rode by on noble steeds." Chamberlain took this so far, he points out, as to name his favorite horse Charlemagne.
And so when it came time to report what took place on Little Round Top, this image of romantic warfare came into full play.
The report that Chamberlain produced "not surprisingly fit his picture of himself - his conception of what a heroic field officer should be." It also "freely portrayed [Chamberlain] as the hero of the day." And it became the foundation for the story he would tell about that day for the rest of his life.
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