Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a bookish professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Maine who became the Union’s most celebrated combat hero of the Civil War, died on this day in history, Feb. 24, 1914.
Brig. Gen. Chamberlain was 85 years old.
“A veritable icon of Civil War legend, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is best known for his heroic participation in the Battle of Gettysburg,” writes the American Battlefield Trust.
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“Prolific and prosaic throughout his life, Chamberlain spent his twilight years writing and speaking about the war.”
His death was attributed at least partly to some of the incredible six wounds he suffered and survived in battle 50 years earlier.
Studio portrait of General Joshua Chamberlain, a federal officer during the American Civil War. Chamberlain won the Medal of Honor for his heroism while commanding the 20th Maine Infantry during the defense of Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg. (CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)
His ability to continue fighting despite numerous wounds, in an era in which whiskey and amputations were common treatments in battlefield medicine, was among his many remarkable successes as soldier.
Chamberlain is the last Civil War soldier to die of injuries suffered in combat, according to the Department of the Defense.
He was “a veritable icon of Civil War legend.” — American Battlefield Trust
Colonel Chamberlain earned the Medal of Honor for his heroic leadership of the 20th Maine Infantry at Gettysburg.
He later had the honor of accepting General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
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He served four terms as governor of Maine, wrote a powerful chronicle of the last months of the war, “The Passing of the Armies,” and returned to academia, spending 12 years as president of Bowdoin.
Chamberlain’s legend was forged on Little Round Top, on the far left flank of the vast Union army at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1863.
An American flag that flew over a base in Iraq, and a portrait of Union Civil War General Joshua Chamberlain, are among the patriotic touches that line the walls of the Freedom General Store in Freedom on June 30, 2014. (Gabe Souza/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)
Chamberlain’s 20th Maine repelled numerous Confederate charges but ran out of ammunition.
He could not retreat and he could not surrender — or the rebels might roll up the entire Union line and possibly win the war with a stunning victory in the northern state.
Chamberlain responded with a dramatic bayonet charge down the hill, a turning point in American history that was immortalized in the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1974 historical novel “The Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara and again in the 1993 movie, “Gettysburg.”
“Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the greatest sound he could make, boiling the sound up from his chest.” — Michael Shaara
“Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the greatest sound he could make, boiling the sound up from his chest,” Shaara wrote in the dramatized account of the historically accurate encounter.
“Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams,” wrote Shaara.
“He saw the whole regiment rising and pouring over the wall, and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying and wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, the last round.”
General Robert Lee surrendering to General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox, on April 9, 1865, American Civil War, 19th century. General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain ordered Union troops to salute the Confederate troops to begin the process of healing the nation. (Getty Images)
The frenzied charge swept away four Confederate regiments. About 2,000 men were killed, wounded, surrendered or retreated.
The rebel army lost the battle the following day, with the heroic but ill-fated disaster of Pickett’s Charge.
Chamberlain’s beautifully written work, “The Passing of the Armies,” published posthumously in 1915, serves as a foundation of scholarship of the final year of the Civil War and offers sobering insight into of the minds of men in combat.
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“The hammering business had been hard on the hammer,” he wrote of the tragic Union casualties suffered while trying to pound the Confederates into defeat at Petersburg in the final months of the war.
Chamberlain was later given the duty of accepting General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, adding to his legend among Civil War soldiers.
“Grant wished the ceremony to be as simple as possible, and that nothing should be done to humiliate the manhood of the southern soldiers,” Chamberlain wrote in “The Passing of the Armies.”
Portrait of General Joshua L. Chamberlain, 1908, Joseph B. Kahill, pastel on paper/pastel board, 29 3/8 in. x 22 1/16 in. (74.61 cm x 56.04 cm). (Sepia Times/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
He ordered his columns to salute the defeated Confederate troops — helping set the tone of the peace in Lincoln’s stated hope “with malice toward none and charity toward all.”
“It was not a ‘present arms,’ however … which then as now was the highest possible honor to be paid even to a president,” Chamberlain later said.
“It was the ‘carry arms,’ as it was then known, with musket held by the right hand and perpendicular to the shoulder.”
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“Throughout the war, Chamberlain was wounded six times, most grievously at Petersburg in June 1864,” writes American Battlefield Trust.
“Believing this wound to be mortal, Congress promoted Chamberlain to the rank of brigadier general. Chamberlain, however, would survive the wound, and return to the front in time to play a pivotal role in the Appomattox Campaign.”
“Grant wished … that nothing should be done to humiliate the manhood of the Southern soldiers.” — Chamberlain on end of war
His achievements with both sword and quill make him one of the most remarkable soldiers in American history.
“Our place in human brotherhood, our responsibility not only in duty for country, but as part of its very being, came into view,” he wrote of serving the nation in wartime.
Pickett’s Charge, Battle of Gettysburg, Civil War, 1863. The ill-fated charge came the day after the Confederate failure to move the 20th Maine Infantry off Little Round Top at the far southern end of the battlefield. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
His legend was cemented in that decisive moment of action on July 2, 1863, for which he was awarded the nation’s highest honor for valor.
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Some historians argue that the heroic Chamberlain not only saved the Union army at Little Round Top, but saved the cause of the Union itself.
“The regiment’s sudden, desperate bayonet charge blunted the Confederate assault on Little Round Top and has been credited with saving Major General George Gordon Meade’s Army of the Potomac, winning the Battle of Gettysburg and setting the South on a long, irreversible path to defeat,” reports American Battlefield Trust.
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