Originally aired on July 04, 1997 - In part 149 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the career of Joshua L. Chamberlain.
#149 – General Joshua L. Chamberlain
No more unlikely hero has come to center-stage in recent years. Two biographies and scene-stealing parts in the movie Gettysburg have catapulted Joshua L. Chamberlain to new heights of popularity. At the moment he is closer than ever to the epitome of the American citizen-soldier.
A native of Maine, Chamberlain was teaching courses in religion and romance languages at his alma mater, Bowdoin College, when the guns of civil war sounded. In 1862 he received a two-year leave of absence to study in Europe. Chamberlain took the sabbatical, then joined the army.
He saw action at Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville. By the time he reached Gettysburg in July, 1863, Chamberlain was colonel of the 20th Maine. He was then thirty-four, lanky, with high forehead, drooping mustache, and the eyes of a thinker.
In the second day’s fighting at Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held a position on the far left of the Union line. The 350 men were spaced yards apart among the trees and boulders on the south face of an eminence called Little Round Top. Against that sector, Confederate General James Longstreet launched concentrated assaults. For two hours that afternoon, the 20th Maine endured the hardest combat it had ever known.
The Southern attacks began to have an effect. Half of Chamberlain’s regiment was down; the other half was running out of ammunition. When the colonel saw his men preparing to use their muskets as clubs in the next onslaught, he got an inspiration. Chamberlain shouted for his soldiers to fix bayonets and charge. With a yell – and with empty muskets, the New Englanders lunged forward at the Confederates.
This wildly improbable counterattack worked because it was so unexpected. Confederates fled the hillside. Chamberlain had saved the Union army’s left flank. This feat gained him the Congressional Medal of Honor.
He continued to display exemplary conduct in subsequent actions at Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, and in the siege of Petersburg. In all, the former college professor took part in 26 Civil War engagements and was wounded six times. On April 1, 1865, General U. S. Grant gave Chamberlain a field promotion to brigadier general when the general-in-chief thought that Chamberlain had been mortally wounded at Five Forks. Two weeks later, Chamberlain had the distinction of commanding the Union forces that received the formal surrender of Lee’s army.
Chamberlain’s public career was far from done. After the war he served four terms as governor of Maine. For 13 years he was president of Bowdoin College. Yet more than those accomplishments, Chamberlain became esteemed for his writings. His war memoirs, The Passing of the Armies, is among the most quoted of Civil War books. He was likewise a favorite speaker at any gathering of veterans. Certainly one of his most moving statements came (appropriately) at Gettysburg.
On a fall afternoon in 1889, the State of Maine dedicated two monuments on the battlefield. To a large but humbled audience, Chamberlain gave these thoughts: “In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger to consecrate ground for the vision ….And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and (to) dream; and lo! The shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision shall pass into their souls.”
Regrettably today, the greed of developers has blinded them to the visions of yesteryear. Nevertheless, Joshua Chamberlain gave us valor in battle as well as a Lincoln-like gift for words. We remember, because we must not forget.