Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
U.S. Civil War – Joshua Chamberlain, Unlikely Hero – Ronald C. White
175 Plays11 months ago
Ep 046 – Nonfiction. Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and professor. During the U.S. Civil War, he rose to fame as one of the North’s greatest heroes. Ronald C. White joins me to discuss his book, “On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.”
Support local bookstores & buy Ron’s book here: https://bookshop.org/a/92235/9780525510086
Subscribe to the War Books podcast here:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@warbookspodcast
Apple: https://apple.co/3FP4ULb
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3kP9scZ
Follow the show here:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/warbookspodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/warbookspodcast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/warbookspodcast/
War Books Podcast is a podcast dedicated to exploring history by interviewing today’s best authors writing about war-related topics. War Books Podcast aims to spotlight the profound historical moments that have shaped war and conflict throughout history, and highlight today’s best writers in the fields of military history, war studies, war writing, current events, politics, fiction, literature, history, and more. This podcast is tailored to a broad audience, from general interest to war enthusiasts to teachers and history professors. The objective is to inform, educate, and think deeply about the nature of conflict and the stories that define human beings at their most perilous, harrowing moments.
#history #war #warbooks #authorinterviews #book #newbook #historyteacher #historyprofessor #bookstagram #instabooks #reels #reelsvideo #bookreels #library #historybook #reading #conflict #bookshelf #bookstore #shortsclip #shortscraft #shortsbook #shortshistory #historyfacts #historychannel #historybuff #historyofwar #militaryhistory #warwriting
Recommended
Transcript
Chamberlain's Early Military Aspirations
00:00:00
Speaker
When he joined the governor, governors of all the states were looking for eminent persons who had the ability to recruit 1,000 men in a regiment. So he offered Chamberlain a colonelcy. And I'm sure the governor was surprised when Chamberlain said, no, I have to turn that down. I don't deserve a colonelcy. I don't have any military training.
00:00:23
Speaker
He said, I will start at a lower rank. And then in this wonderful words, he said to the governor, I want to learn and earn my way to a higher rank. So he starts out under another great main figure, as it turns out of Delbert Ames, who's 26 years old, the graduate of West Point.
00:00:43
Speaker
Ames takes over the 20th Maine leadership and the men hate him because he's a strict disciplinarian. Some of them write they hope he will be the first casualty when they face the Confederates. But Chamberlain did not hate him. They're seven years older than Ames. He knows he has a lot to learn about military discipline, military strategy.
00:01:06
Speaker
So the teacher becomes the learner. And again, I think that says a lot about him. He's willing to be the learner knowing what he does not know.
Introduction of Ronald C. White
00:01:35
Speaker
Today I am extremely excited to have on the show Ronald C. White for his new book On Great Fields, The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Ron is the New York Times bestselling author of biographies A. Lincoln and American Ulysses.
00:01:54
Speaker
as well as three other books on Lincoln, most recently Lincoln in Private. White earned his PhD at Princeton, has lectured at the White House, and has spoken about Lincoln across the world. He is a senior fellow of the Trinity Forum in Washington, D.C. Ron, how are you doing today?
00:02:12
Speaker
Hey Jay, thank you so much for inviting me to participate with you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for joining. So excited to have you on the show. So excited that you wrote this book. We were talking before we got going here. I was a big fan of your last book about Ulysses S. Grant, American Ulysses. And I've got this, so I listened to the audio version of that and it was in my car when I was listening to it.
00:02:38
Speaker
And I'm here in the outskirts of Washington, D.C., but my family actually lives in Indiana. And I was listening to your book on that trip. And I don't know why this has stuck in my mind for several years now, but every time I make that drive, I think about your book because it's just like the associations with the landmarks. And, you know, this is where you were writing about this particular thing in Grant's life.
00:03:00
Speaker
So yeah, I thought I would share that tidbit. But I was also listening to the audio version of this, which is different than the audio version of your last one because you yourself narrated it, correct? I had to rally for that. Often, as you well know it, there's a group of professionals that do this. And I said, I would like to do this. I think audiences, readers like, if they're possible, to have the author be the narrator.
00:03:26
Speaker
Oh, you're absolutely right. I will always, I was really excited when I saw that. I will always gravitate towards audio books that are narrated by the person who wrote the book. And it just so happens that you've got a great voice for audio narration. So second time around, you're actually in my car on the trip this last, over Thanksgiving actually. Except it was your voice to your words instead of somebody else's voice to your words.
Rediscovery of Chamberlain's Legacy
00:03:52
Speaker
Well, yeah, well, we're talking today about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and your new book. First question I like guests to sort of answering on the show is, if in your own words, could you just tell us what is your book about? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was rediscovered in the novel Killer Angels in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary and played by Jeff Daniels in the movie Gettysburg.
00:04:18
Speaker
And it's been a wonderful rediscovery, but it's been what I call a zoom lens. It's focused almost exclusively on Gettysburg and the Civil War. I wanted to provide a wide angle lens. Chamberlain does so many different things. He has so many other vocations, professor, governor, college president, amazing lecturer, and great writer. We need to hear the wider angle story of Chamberlain.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, and so your other books are about huge figures in American history, Lincoln, Grant. I wouldn't say Chamberlain is an obscure figure. He's definitely less well known than Grant or Lincoln. Why did you choose to write about him?
00:05:07
Speaker
Well, when you speak about someone, I was speaking about Ulysses S. Grant at the Jonathan Club in Los Angeles in the spring of 2016, and everybody, someone will always ask, and what is your next book?
00:05:19
Speaker
And I said, well, I didn't want to be flippant, but I said, well, I'm not really sure. Does anybody have any ideas? I don't think I've ever said that. And this fellow in the back of the room stood up and literally shouted, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. And I sort of said, oh. So then I checked with my editor, agent, publisher, and my goodness, with all of the fame in one sense, there had not been a full blown biography, perhaps never a full blown biography of his total life and his total accomplishments.
00:05:48
Speaker
That's how it came about.
Chamberlain's Early Life and Education
00:05:51
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you know, let's let's just kind of dive right into his life, starting at the beginning. So let's just maybe start off talking about his upbringing. What kind of home did he grow up in? What was he doing before the war? What were his pre-war years like?
00:06:11
Speaker
But one of my convictions is that often biographies skip too quickly over the young person's life, what I call the formative period of a person's life. And I say to audiences, think of your own lives. You might be 40, 60, 70, but when you were 16, 18, 20, 22, work those the years that often the basic values or beliefs of your life was formed.
00:06:35
Speaker
So he was born in the small town of Brewer, Maine, a thousand people. His parents were deeply religious. He, from an early age, had an intellectual curiosity, which was then enhanced by going to Bowdoin College. Five days horseback ride north of Harvard, we needed a college in Maine. And there he had a classical education.
00:06:58
Speaker
And classical education was really a character education about values, duty, loyalty, magnanimity. And this I think really shaped who he was. So he combined both this classical education and his Christian upbringing to make him a person, I think, of real character. And that's what I think shines through in all the various locations of his life.
00:07:26
Speaker
Now, was he maybe a mild-mannered guy? What was his personality like? Yeah. One reason I use the title unlikely is he was mild-mannered, amiable, good humor. He actually came to the college with a great deficit. He was a stutterer or a stammerer.
00:07:45
Speaker
And this really was difficult in a very oral culture, where much of the education was by recitation. So this is what makes him unlikely to suddenly be this fearless soldier in the Civil War. This is not what anyone would have predicted knowing him as a young man.
00:08:03
Speaker
Yeah and you know that's a very it's it's this is a very interesting figure to to read about actually because one of the the patterns on this show that that emerges often is all these people who you know nobody nobody completely plans for a war and it just happens and the people who are there are the people who are there so these people who are maybe not suited you know you don't think about
00:08:26
Speaker
you know, this stammering kind of bookish type figure as being like a warrior. But it's often the result of people who are thrown in these situations. So I believe he was, what was his vocation? What was he planning to do before the war came? Well, that's a big question. When he graduated from Bowdoin College, his parents had quite different visions for his future.
00:08:53
Speaker
His father wanted him to go to West Point. And in those days, you would could go to West Point after you graduate from college. His mother wanted him to be a minister or missionary. And the untold story I discovered was that he accepted her advice, his own decision, and he went to Bangor Theological Seminary for three years. But because he never became a minister, those three years have been relegated to two sentences in the previous biographies.
00:09:23
Speaker
But I argue that those three years were also part of his formation. My problem was that the seminary, founded in 1814, went out of business in 2013. Fortunately, I could find the records. They were put into the main historical society. I arrived just after they'd been catalogued. So this is who he thought he might be. But as he graduated, he was offered the chance to give a speech at the Bowdoin commencement, which would then give him a Master of Arts degree.
00:09:52
Speaker
and the speech was so remarkable, I guess, that the next morning they offered him a teaching position. That's what he was doing when the Civil War broke out.
Career Choices Influenced by Family and Fanny
00:10:01
Speaker
That's very interesting that his father wanted him to go to West Point and his mother wanted him to be a minister and he chose to be a minister yet later on, of course, he would go into the war. It is very interesting. Do we know anything about
00:10:17
Speaker
Kind of his decision making at that time, why he chose the path of being a minister, whereas his family disappointed that he took that path. Did he have a tense relationship with his father because of it? What do we know about the decision making around that? I think he had a closer relationship to his mother than his father. I wouldn't say that was the reason he chose to go to seminary. I think he wasn't really sure what he wanted to do.
00:10:42
Speaker
And so he tried this out and thought he might do that. But then he also enters into a relationship with Fannie Frances Caroline Adams, who was not sure she wanted to be a minister's wife. She was very sure she didn't want to be a missionary's wife.
00:11:01
Speaker
Yeah. Well, let's, let's, let's talk about Fanny. What, what was the, how did that relationship get started? What was, what brought them together and how did their lives start? Well, when I do a biography, I often begin by understanding or understand quickly, there are pieces of a puzzle and a key piece of the puzzle was Fanny, how to understand her. She had been born into a family in Boston, the seventh child.
00:11:29
Speaker
Her father was 50 years old, old enough to be her grandfather. And they did something in the 19th century, extremely surprising to us today. When she was four, he literally gave her to his younger cousin, George Adams, who was in his twenties, pastor of First Parish in Brunswick, Maine. So that's where she grew up. She was the organist or pianist in the choir.
00:11:56
Speaker
the church, and he sang in the choir, and that's how they met. Bowdoin College was for men. She did not go to college, but she's a very high-spirited person, and if I could, I'd like to just read this one little excerpt about Fanny. This just says so much to me about her character, who she really was, and this is really an amazing story. As a high school girl, maybe 17 years of age, she was
00:12:24
Speaker
noted for her very spirited wit and humor, and one day her teacher Alfred Pike gave an assignment. He wanted the students to compose a paper ending with the verbs ending in FY. Now she knew that Mr. Pike did not entirely approve of her humor, so this is what she wrote.
00:12:46
Speaker
This is to certify, notify, exemplify, testify, and signify my obedient disposition. And I hope that it will gratify, satisfy, beautify, and edify my teacher, and pacify, modify, and nullify his feelings of dissatisfaction towards me.
00:13:09
Speaker
please do not exclaim, oh, five, when reading this paper. I just think that story tells you a lot about her spirit as a young woman. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for reading that. You're absolutely right. And, you know, I wonder, I wonder how then, how did they compliment each other? Was he very, very quiet and maybe not so
00:13:32
Speaker
as you put it, high spirited. What was their dynamic like? Well, another dissimilarity which bothered her at first was she was three years older than he. And in the 19th century at this point in time, most marriages would consist of a man being six years older than the woman.
00:13:51
Speaker
So she was very high-spirited. She was into art, painting. She was into music. He was
Motivation to Join the Union Army
00:13:58
Speaker
a more serious person. I wouldn't necessarily say he was a sober person, but they did have different abilities and different interests, but sometimes those differences attract each other. Yeah. Well, so they've found each other. They are two people who
00:14:17
Speaker
have gotten married. How do they start their lives? What are they hoping for? Well, he's a teacher, a professor at Bowdoin College. And then in April of 1961, the Civil War breaks out.
00:14:31
Speaker
There were no electives in colleges at that time, so I think Chamberlain would have known every single person, student who had enlisted in the Union Army, two actually enlisted in the Confederate Army. And John Cross, the alumni secretary at Bowdoin College has been a great help to me in tracking down every one of these soldiers.
00:14:55
Speaker
Chamberlain is conversing, corresponding with some of them. He knows when they've been captured, several have been killed. And then in 1862, Lincoln offers a proclamation that we need 300,000 more men. And in 13 days, Chamberlain writes to the governor of Maine and volunteers his service.
00:15:16
Speaker
Well, what was, I guess, thinking about kind of the lead up to the war, and this is always just such a fascinating period to me, is the lead up to the Civil War. Just kind of trying to put myself in the place of, one actually, one of the reasons why I like your books is it is very easy for me to put myself in the place of the people you write about, which I enjoy.
00:15:38
Speaker
But thinking about the lead up and trying to put myself in the place of normal Americans and the calculations they're making, the things they're worried about, what they're following in the newspaper. So he's in Maine leading up to the Civil War. What's most likely in his community? What's the discussion like? What politically are people worried about and talking about? And what does he believe politically?
00:16:06
Speaker
Well, a help to me here was a young man whose father ran the hardware store in Brunswick has kept a journal. And what people are talking about is the union. I think it's very hard for us today to really get our minds around this concept. It wasn't simply a political concept. It was almost a religious concept, certainly a transcendent concept. So they weren't really talking about slavery in Maine.
00:16:33
Speaker
They were talking about the Union, and this is why men joined up so readily, so quickly, to defend the Union.
00:16:41
Speaker
And this was a far northern state, a New England state, and the sense of the Union was very, very strong among them. That was the impetus for signing up. And do we have any evidence that Chamberlain was himself? Was he outspoken about Union? Did he make political statements? What do we know about his mindset?
00:17:05
Speaker
There's a wonderful file in the Bowdoin College Library, which he put together himself, where he called it, My Little Speeches on the War. So in that first year of the war, he spoke quite often. He was an elegant speaker. Here again is the unlikeliness. Here's this boy who comes to the College of Stamberer. Now he's professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin.
00:17:27
Speaker
And so he spoke about the wonder of the union. And finally, when he signs up, his motivation, as he says to the governor, as he said, it's very important that men like me who have positions are willing to give up what they have. He saw this war being fought mostly by boys, by very, very young men, teenagers.
00:17:49
Speaker
But now he at age 33 believes that people of his place need to sign up. No one would have criticized him with a wife and two young children for not signing up, but this was his impetus to sign up. Yeah. Well, you know, just kind of thinking about your other books about Grant and Lincoln, I think we could probably say that they were unlikely heroes.
00:18:14
Speaker
Yeah. Is that part of the fascination that you have with Chamberlain or just characters that you like to do biographies about in general? Well, when I did my biography of Lincoln, I was working at the Huntington Library in San Reno, California, and the director of research said, do we need another biography of Lincoln? So we knew a lot about Lincoln, we thought. Grant was one I thought along with others needed to be kind of recalibrated
00:18:44
Speaker
to often have a fresh picture of him. He had been put down as a scandal person in the presidency, as a person in the Civil War who was heedless of men's lives. No, I really didn't think of them so much as unlikely. Certainly I thought of Chamberlain as unlikely as I got to know him. I've lived with him for six years. Sometimes I wake up at three o'clock in the morning thinking about Chamberlain.
00:19:10
Speaker
And then I decided that he really is a very unlikely person. Let's talk about Chamberlain the soldier. So how did he come to join the union army? When did he join?
Learning Military Strategy Under Ames
00:19:23
Speaker
You mentioned a little bit about how there's this call in Maine. And he joined up very quickly. What did his family think? What was going on in the moment that he decided it's time for me to enter this war?
00:19:38
Speaker
Those are the questions I asked myself. When he joined the governor, governors of all the states were looking for eminent persons who had the ability to recruit 1,000 men in a regiment. So he offered Chamberlain a colonelcy.
00:19:55
Speaker
And I'm sure the governor was surprised when Chamberlain said, no, I have to turn that down. I don't deserve a colonel. See, I don't have any military training. He said, I will start at a lower rank. And then in this wonderful words, he said to the governor, I want to learn and earn my way to a higher rank. So he starts out under another great main figure, as it turns out, of Delbert Ames, who's 26 years old, the graduate of West Point.
00:20:23
Speaker
Ames takes over the 20th Maine leadership and the men hate him because he's a strict disciplinarian. Some of them write they hope he will be the first casualty when they face the Confederates. But Chamberlain did not hate him. They're seven years older than Ames. He knows he has a lot to learn about military discipline, military strategy.
00:20:47
Speaker
So a teacher becomes the learner. And again, I think that says a lot about him. He's willing to be the learner knowing what he does not know. That says a lot about his first months, really almost first year of the Civil War. And what does his family think when, you know, this kind of bookish professor, this teacher is all of a sudden going to become an officer? This is the first born, the eldest son. They're very concerned.
00:21:16
Speaker
The father even had some kind of almost pro-Confederate thoughts. It's very hard to remember how much the Confederacy was popular in many places within the state. All the way up in Maine. And all the way up in Maine, and obviously New York, in Boston. The controversy is what did his wife Fanny think?
00:21:38
Speaker
Now at the very, almost the end of his life, Chamberlain hired a very young woman to be his secretary in the early 20th century. In 1976, now not a young woman, she gives an interview in which she says, well, his wife did not want him to go off to the Civil War. Well, there's no evidence for that. She had never met Fannie. Fannie was dead by the time she was hired as his secretary, but that's been repeated over and over and over again.
00:22:06
Speaker
any wife would be worried about her husband's injury or his possible death. He's the father of their children. So we don't fully know, but I find no evidence that she is against what he's doing. She certainly would be concerned about what he's doing. Yeah. Well, first, I always think it's interesting when I hear about people recently, I mean, I guess the 70s, maybe not so recent, but recent enough who have connections to that time period.
00:22:36
Speaker
There's an article in the Atlantic recently about James Longstreet. And I guess his second wife was like 40 or 50 years younger than him. Right, right, right, right. Amazing. Yeah, and she was giving interviews in the 60s or the 70s just about him. And she lived quite a long life. But I think that's very interesting to hear about people recently who have a perspective like that.
00:23:07
Speaker
But thinking about Chamberlain and in his family,
00:23:13
Speaker
I wonder if his father wanted him to go to West Point, but now he's hesitating to see his son leave. I wonder if that we're at 1862 now. Is it because the Union is losing so badly that maybe there are hesitations? I'm not sure if we could even characterize as losing so badly, but definitely losing right now. Is it a fight that people think the Union aren't going to win?
00:23:43
Speaker
that's part of it. But then, interestingly, once he is in, Chamberlain is in, his father becomes proud of him.
00:23:50
Speaker
and believes that there's kind of almost a lucky star that follows the eldest son. A couple of the younger sons will ultimately die of tuberculosis, but the youngest son, Tom, also signs up to serve with Chamberlain, with the older son. So now there's a pride in him. And in this journal that I discovered in this town of Brunswick,
00:24:15
Speaker
The young man writes in about Chamberlain several times because the town knows who he is and they are proud that he is leading the 20th. By Gettysburg he is leading the 20th Maine and Delbert Ames has now been promoted to another position.
00:24:31
Speaker
Yeah. Well, so Chamberlain joins. He's now in an officer role. I believe he gets shipped out to Virginia. Yes. And something interesting that you write about is, and I forget, again, it's so fun and interesting to put myself in the position of somebody back at this time. But you write, most of the soldiers from Maine had never actually left the state.
00:25:00
Speaker
And so getting to Virginia, it's it almost feels it seems like it's like a foreign country. That's a good it is a foreign country to these men. They're not prepared for what they experience.
00:25:12
Speaker
The weather is completely different. The terrain is completely different. The people, they've never really been around African Americans before. Now they see and see them in Virginia. It's a very new experience for them. Now, is that specific, you think, just to Maine? Because it's so kind of, I don't know if remote is the right word, but further away than, say, Pennsylvania.
00:25:36
Speaker
Are most people at this point in history, do they not leave their states? Are they encountering all sorts of new types of people? Yes, it's easy to forget that for most people, most just take young men, they are born, married, live, work, and die in the same town, as did their fathers and their mothers. There isn't the mobility that we just take for granted today.
00:26:07
Speaker
So what are some of the things that like a soldier from Maine is going to encounter a soldier from Virginia or Northern Virginia, whatever is like the southernmost point of the Union entry? What are some of the differences that might be between those two types of soldiers?
00:26:25
Speaker
Well, first of all, the clothing they're wearing is not at all appropriate for arriving in Virginia in the middle of the summer. They have never experienced this kind of heat and humidity in Virginia. Then suddenly they're in a terrain where people are not applauding them, not cheering them on as when they first arrived in Boston and they're great heroes going south. Now they're among people who are not pleased at all that they're there.
00:26:53
Speaker
And they can't tell really who are the for and who is the against. And the problem often at night or in certain places of bushwhacking taking place by men who simply appear to be farmers during the day, but are Confederate sympathizers at night. So it's a whole new situation, much more tumultuous than they ever expected.
00:27:15
Speaker
And what are some of Chamberlain's thoughts maybe leading up to like his first, the first action he sees? What are some of his thoughts about being a new soldier and being in a foreign land? Well, foreign land quote, unquote. Part of his thoughts, and he's kind of reluctant to share these with Fanny, he's very circumspect about what he writes to her, is the danger involved. And the question I think in the mind and heart of every soldier, what will he do when he's faced with someone firing at him?
00:27:45
Speaker
And to, I think, Chamberlain's own surprise and to the admiration of his men, he seems to be absolutely courageous in terms of not flinching, not going back. And he watches as other men do. They're frightened, understandably, in this new situation. So he emerges rather quickly, and it's not simply that somebody has said this at the end, you know, in Killer Angels,
00:28:10
Speaker
but there's all kinds of testimonies from letters and journals of the men in his 20th mate who really regard him with great appreciation. Yeah. Well, when he first sees action, where do you think that this courage comes from? I believe he pretty quickly gets his horse shot out from under him. Where do you think this school teacher, well, school teacher, this teacher, where do you think this courage comes from?
00:28:39
Speaker
I like to think to myself that in this spontaneity, as you describe it correctly, there's a foundation to it. It really comes all the way back to the values that have been a part of your life growing up. I kind of ask myself the question, I don't know the full story, what made the firemen rush into the Cathedral of Notre Dame?
00:29:01
Speaker
in the midst of that raging fire spontaneously and take all of these precious elements right back out. So I think it's really his commitment to duty, his affection for his fellow soldiers. These are the values that I think will finally come to the fore. They might have been latent values before, but they come to the fore in the midst of the Civil War.
00:29:24
Speaker
Well, let's talk about up to Gettysburg because Gettysburg is, I don't want to say the main event, but that's the big battle.
Pivotal Role at Gettysburg
00:29:37
Speaker
What types of battles is Chamberlain involved in leading up to Gettysburg? What happens to him in those battles? How's his role evolving as an officer?
00:29:49
Speaker
Well, the 20th Maine arrives at the beginning of the second day, July 2nd, and he receives a command from Strong Vincent, the brigade commander. You are to defend the far left line. Hold it at all costs.
00:30:05
Speaker
And I should inject here that Chamberlain's life as he's become this great hero is not without controversy. So there's even controversy about what did he actually do? What did he actually say at Gettysburg? Some have said, well, Strong Vincent deserves more credit. But Chamberlain gives Strong Vincent credit. Strong Vincent will be killed in the midst of the battle for Little Round Top.
00:30:29
Speaker
So he has given the command to defend the far left line. Now his thousand man main 20th regiment is less than 500 men. All kinds of deaths, desertions, lots of different ideas. He's facing a force twice his size, almost twice his size. Basically the 15th Alabama, led by William Calvin Oates. Although there are Texas regiments coming up a little round top also.
00:30:57
Speaker
And actually, real quick, could we, to give context for the audience who might not be so familiar with Gettysburg itself, could you briefly describe why this battle is taking place here, the situation, the leadership? Could you describe the bigger picture real quick? Yes, thank you. Yeah. Well, no one expected it to take place here. This is a market town just a few miles north of the Maryland border, 10 or 11
00:31:26
Speaker
roads come into Gettysburg, and in a kind of almost chance happening, Confederates and Union soldiers fire on each other, and suddenly 160,000 men, the two armies, meet together. One of the, again, the ironers of this is that the Confederates are coming in from the north, and the Union soldiers are coming in from the south.
00:31:53
Speaker
And so suddenly this has joined. Robert E. Lee has believed that if he could make an invasion into the North,
00:32:00
Speaker
This would perhaps make the North want to sue for peace that he could change the 1864 presidential election and that Lincoln is now being called Lincoln's war. Lincoln would be defeated in that bid for reelection. So this is the far Northern push of the Confederate Army. And on the first day, they're quite successful. They have more men in place in the first day than the Union Army does. But then on the morning of the
00:32:30
Speaker
Second day, Gouverneur Warren
00:32:33
Speaker
takes his spy glasses, his field glasses, looks up at Little Round Top and realizes that this place is not being defended. And if the Confederates could get to the top of Little Round Top, they would then have, in a sense, the high ground, they would be able to be in a commanding position. So suddenly, it's imperative that the Northern Union Army mount Little Round Top to be in a position to defend the far left line of the Union Army.
00:33:03
Speaker
And the stakes are that if the Confederate army succeeds at Gettysburg, then they're going to come down from the North and encircle Washington DC, correct? Absolutely. No, then it's not simply Gettysburg, but Washington DC, I mean today, you can drive from Washington DC to Gettysburg an hour and a half. It's not that far. This would have threatened the capital of the nation.
00:33:27
Speaker
And so leading up to Gettysburg, how do people know Chamberlain? What's the action he's seen so far? What's his reputation once he arrives and he's now entrusted to lead soldiers in this massive battle? Well, up to this point in time, at several places, Antietam, Fredericksburg, the 20th Maine has not really been involved.
00:33:52
Speaker
They've been held in reserve. They've watched. They've been involved in a number of skirmishes. Chamberlain has had several horses shot out from under him. But they've never been in a major battle. And so it's not at all clear how will the 20th Maine do, how will Chamberlain lead. And this is what makes the drama of the whole event so huge. This is in some ways the first major battle for the 20th Maine.
00:34:21
Speaker
Well, let's talk about the 20th Maine and their experience in Gettysburg. What happens? How do they contribute to the Union victory? Well, they are at the top of Little Round Top. They're defending the far left line and suddenly the 15th Alabama led by William Calvin Oates starts coming up through the boulders and the trees.
00:34:47
Speaker
The problem for the 20th Maine is they literally run out of ammunition. And so what will they do at this point? Again, it's kind of a controversy through history and memory. What did Chamberlain actually say? I think he probably said only one word, bayonet. And the bayonets, which are not used often at all in Civil War, suddenly this becomes the basis of their charge down the hill.
00:35:11
Speaker
They rout the Confederates, capture some, others flee, and it's recognized right away Adelbert Ames, who I brought up as the commander originally of the 20th Maine, writes chamber on the very next day, July 3rd, to congratulate him on the significant victory. So he was understood at the time. This is not some retrospective perception of what took place.
00:35:39
Speaker
And do we know, did Chamberlain write about how he felt in that moment? Do we know what was going through his head? He's a courageous man, of course. I mean, obviously, you're leading a bayonet charge down a hill. That's a scary thing. Do we know how he was feeling in that moment? Well, he wrote to his wife, and it's interesting the way he conducted or wrote this letter. At first, he says to her, in effect,
00:36:08
Speaker
this was a great moment and I was there leading us. And then I think it's almost like he pauses, looks at what he wrote and this sounds a little presumptuous or arrogant. And then he literally says, but I don't mean to say that. So he's trying to modify what he's saying. He doesn't want to give all the credit to himself. He wants her to know really the credit belongs to the men of his regiment who were so courageous at that moment.
00:36:37
Speaker
Now, thinking about kind of the tactics of this charge, why do you think it was successful and something like the very infamous Pickett's Charge was not successful? Well, it took the Confederates by surprise, first of all. And they had the advantage, they had less men, but they had the advantage of taking the initiative, catching the Confederates by surprise. I think that was a big part of it. Pickett's Charge is a completely different story.
00:37:08
Speaker
Well, so Gettysburg is a victory for the Union, but major losses, as you noted. How is Chamberlain, when the dust settles, what role has he stepped into? How is he being regarded by his colleagues in the leadership in the Union Army?
00:37:35
Speaker
After Gettysburg, he has in a certain sense established his role. There's even a movement to nominate him to become a general. And he's got a number of people who write on his behalf. Some really remarkable letters. And yet in the way that this sometimes happened in the Civil War, he does not.
00:37:57
Speaker
received the promotion to general. Lincoln ultimately makes that decision. We're not quite sure why that happened. Maybe Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, had a role in this and maybe there had some inner mural turmoil between Stanton and the people who recommended him. We don't know.
00:38:17
Speaker
So we move forward then in the battle's chamber several times. It's so badly, not even simply wounded, but ill. One time it's malaria that he will go back to Brunswick once, twice. And his mother says to him, don't you think you've now done enough? And of course, he signed up for three years. And again, his sense of duty says, no, I've made this decision and I must continue and follow through with it.
00:38:47
Speaker
Well, how does he, so the war ends. He's kind of this, as you write, unlikely soldier. He's a teacher, becomes a soldier or an officer. He's fought in this huge battle of the war. He's demonstrated his own heroism. How does he think of himself by the time the war ends? What's his own self-perception?
00:39:16
Speaker
Well, he is known as the hero of Little Round Top.
Injuries and Personal Reflection
00:39:20
Speaker
But then on top of that, two other events in the Civil War really mark who he is. At Petersburg, 10 months after Gettysburg, he is leading a charge when he is hit by a mini-ball that goes into his right hip, shatters blood vessels, scrapes his urethra and bladder, and stays inside his left hip.
00:39:43
Speaker
He is told by two surgeons who come upon him that he will die. Today, modern physicians would say he has a 10% chance of surviving such a wound. He writes a remarkable letter to Fanny telling her that he is mortally wounded.
00:39:59
Speaker
that he loves her, confesses his Christian faith, tells her to live for the children. But then younger brother Tom rushes over to the 20th Maine and finds two physicians there. They come over to Chamberlain. They find and remove the bullet, but for the rest of his life, he lives with what today we would call invisible wounds. We're very familiar with the amputations that were a mark of the Civil War.
00:40:25
Speaker
The chamberman three times has surgery to repair this awful wound, but it cannot really be repaired for the rest of his life. He will live with the wound and the infections from the wound.
00:40:37
Speaker
But then 10 months later, just to complete the Civil War story, he is given the order to lead the surrender of Union troops receiving the surrender of the Confederate troops. Again, part of the controversy. There's no written order. And yet my tutor, teacher, friend, Jim McPherson, our greatest Civil War historian said, hey, at the end of the Civil War, not everything was written down.
00:41:02
Speaker
So John B. Gordon, who is written in Lee's esteem, brings forward the Confederate soldiers at Appomattox. Lee and Grant have left. Grant has offered this magnanimous peace offer to Lee. I think Chamberlain must have been thinking about this, and so as the Confederate soldiers come forward, he offers what's called the marching salute. It's not to the cause, but it's to the courage of the Confederate soldiers.
00:41:30
Speaker
And Gordon, leading the Confederate soldiers, is just astonished at this and would remark then and 30 years later in a book he writes about this remarkable gesture of Chamberlain. Does Chamberlain have, by the time the war ends, does he feel like, again, this kind of like quiet bookish guy, does he recognize his own contributions to the success of the Union?
Post-War Struggles and Achievements
00:41:58
Speaker
He does. And what has come through to me, and I've thought about this in terms of, say, World War II, my wife's father was in Patton's Third Army, that for many of these men, very, very young, this is the defining moment of their life. And for a lot of them, it's kind of a struggle afterward. Well, now what do I do? I mean, they fought in this great war. They've had this terrific comradeship. They've been hailed as heroes.
00:42:26
Speaker
So Chamberlain isn't exactly sure what is he going to do after the war. But then the Republican Party of Maine comes forward, they recognize that he is the hero to the Round Top, and they nominate him to become the governor of Maine. Yeah, well, I was just about to ask about some of his post-war contributions. What's Chamberlain well known for after the war?
00:42:48
Speaker
Well, I argue that he serves more different vocations than any other Civil War veteran. Now, he's not president of the United States like Ulysses S. Grant, but he becomes first governor elected four times. Now, the term was just one year, but still very, very unusual four times. Then he becomes president of Bowdoin College for 12 years. Then he becomes a great lecturer
00:43:16
Speaker
And then there was no pension, a small military pension, not a pension from governor, not a pension from president. He tries his hand in business. And as his son Willys will say at the end of the 19th century, our man can't be successful in everything. And he was not very successful in business.
00:43:40
Speaker
That's very interesting. I think there is, I think similar, I think there's something with Grant where he was like a tanner or he tried to be a tanner or something. Right, right. Yeah. Well, what, what, what has he, now that he's seen the horrors of war, you know, he's obviously, he's public service is important to him. He's governor. He's lecturing. What's he kind of making his, his mission in these post-war years?
00:44:06
Speaker
Well, he's very worried that the memory of the war is disappearing quickly. Abraham Lincoln wrote as a young man, the silent artillery of time is taking away all those who fought in the Revolutionary War.
00:44:22
Speaker
Pearl Harbor this year had just a very few men who came in over a hundred years of age. So he's worried that we're losing our vision and our understanding of why we fought this war.
00:44:38
Speaker
So part of his, what becomes a controversial move is that he initiates at Bowdoin College, what's called the drill, which becomes the drill rebellion.
Legacy in Education and Peacekeeping
00:44:48
Speaker
He thinks young men in the 1870s and 1880s are soft and that we need to harden them so that if another war comes, they will be prepared. So his vision is also to continue to talk about the union, talk about the meaning of America, and he's eloquent in doing so.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think you mentioned that you have a reading from Chamberlain and Augusta. Yeah. Another unlikely event that occurred, we think that the peaceful transfer of power, we've always assumed was just a given in our society until January 6th
00:45:31
Speaker
But actually that peaceful transfer of power had a previous story that was not so peaceful. In 1879,
00:45:43
Speaker
The Republicans believe they have won a great election to be governor of Maine, control the House of Representatives, control the Senate. And then the great count out begins. And the Secretary of State in receiving the ballots counts out, well, this ballot was signed with initials, not full names. Those five votes don't count.
00:46:06
Speaker
Oh, this ballot was signed on one column, not two. Those seven votes don't count. Oh, this ballot was not signed in an open meeting. Oh, those votes don't count. And suddenly the Republicans who thought they were in the lead and about to win the election are in third place. There's also a greenback party. Well, the state of Maine's constitution is that if there's two parties in the lead, the House will decide which which will be the parties and the Senate will decide which will be the governor.
00:46:36
Speaker
So this provokes incredible anger across the state. Men begin marching to Augusta, the state capital, fully armed. And interestingly, the Democratic governor believes there's only one person
00:46:50
Speaker
who can handle the situation. He calls upon Chamberlain, President of Bowdoin College to come to Augusta, and he does. And once he gets there, he realizes that his own life is a threat. People are talking about kidnapping him or killing him. Republicans are saying that he is a traitor to their cause because he is not standing up for them in the way they think he should. So in a very dramatic moment, and let me read this for you,
00:47:20
Speaker
He comes to the rotunda of the capital as we can only call it an insurgency is about to take place and he says these words Men you wish to kill me Killing is no new thing to me I've offered myself to be killed many times when I no more deserved it than now and
00:47:39
Speaker
Some of you, I think, have been there with me in those days. You understand what you want, do you? I'm here to preserve the peace and honor of this state until the right government is seated. Whichever it may be, it's not for me to say, but it is for me to see that the laws of this state are put into effect
00:47:59
Speaker
without fraud, without force, but with calm thought and sincere purpose. I am here for that, and I shall do it. If anybody wants to kill me for it, here I am. Let him kill. And with that, he opens his coat in kind of a dramatic gesture. Wow. Well, just at that moment, a veteran in the crowd calls out, by God, old general, the first man that dares to lay a hand on you, I'll kill him on the spot.
00:48:29
Speaker
and the crowd drifted away. So here is another example in American history, not well known, where the peaceful of transfer of power is not about to take place. I think this is Chamberlain's finest moment. Interestingly, he writes to Fannie the next day, this was a second little round top, a second little round top. What ultimately happens is the State Supreme Court
00:48:55
Speaker
offers its verdict, the Republican did win the governorship. The Republicans did win the House. They did win the Senate. And Chamberlain becomes a hero, just esteemed by people all across the nation and words. This is how he is viewed.
00:49:15
Speaker
Dennis Shapley, remembering his participation in the surrender at Appomattox, wrote, General Chamberlain, we were never so proud of you as now, not even when you stood upon the boundary lines and received the surrender of our vanquished brave foe. So I believe this story deserves its place alongside the story of Little Round Top.
00:49:38
Speaker
Wow, that is a very, that is a powerful story. Yeah, well, if you know a few things about that. First, it's very interesting that he opened his speech talking about killing and death. And you get the sense that not maybe, maybe not just with Chamberlain, but
00:50:00
Speaker
Most of the veterans of the war, you know, nobody was prepared to see this enormous slaughter that happened. And you really wonder how that
00:50:12
Speaker
change Chamberlain and how he viewed life. And I think it's very interesting in that speech that he starts talking about how much death he has seen and how much killing he has seen in asking the crowd, is that what you want? Because I've seen that. And I know what that's like. So that's very interesting. Also very interesting that it seems like by this point in Chamberlain's life, he's maybe not this quiet person anymore.
00:50:38
Speaker
No. Good point. Very good comment. I think so many people, I believe, have sort of latent qualities. And it's often a crisis that brings out the full measure of those qualities and how people then respond to that crisis, the crisis of the Civil War. In this case, the crisis of almost a stolen election in his home state, which he loved deeply.
00:51:02
Speaker
So now he's willing to step forward and offer this speech. He certainly probably wasn't prepared to do that 20 years before. But and he's faced death in the Civil War. He's willing to face death to defend what he thinks are the values of his state.
00:51:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'm curious, especially when it comes to writing biographies about people who are courageous and lead extraordinary lives, I'm curious how you, the writer, how would you say you changed from when you started this project to when you finished it? Well, it's wonderful to try to be a companion to these kinds of people.
00:51:42
Speaker
you'd like to think that some of their values might rub off a little bit. I'm asked the question often, well, who are the leaders of today that embody these values? And I must admit, I have to have a long pause and try to answer that question. But also the other side of that question is, well, who are we? What kind of leaders do we want? What kind of leaders do we demand?
00:52:09
Speaker
And I think in the after effect of the 12 days of 1880 was all of these people who wrote about Chamberlain, what they were really saying is that these are the values we need today in our society, today being 1880. And so I, in my book, by arguing that this is not simply a 19th century story. It's not simply a Civil War story.
00:52:31
Speaker
But I think Chainrun has a lot to say to us today about the values that we want in us, in each of us as individuals, but certainly in the leaders that we elect. Yeah. Well, the title of your book is On Great Fields. First the question is, why is it called that?
00:52:57
Speaker
I think if you wouldn't mind, you've got a third reading that talks about where that phrase comes from. And then maybe just finish out by talking about what's important about Joshua Chamberlain's life. What should we all remember him for?
00:53:14
Speaker
Well, thank you. I give credit to my editor, Caitlin McKenna, who came up with the title. All right. Shout out to the editor. Yeah. But the title, as you suggest, comes from Chamberlain's most famous words. In 1889, the 20th Maine, those who still lived, went back to Gettysburg to dedicate monuments to both little round top and big round top. And at Gettysburg in 1889, Chamberlain said these words.
00:53:44
Speaker
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 place of souls.
Enduring Impact of Chamberlain's Values
00:54:02
Speaker
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,
00:54:12
Speaker
shall come to this deathless field to ponder and dream." So Chamberlain
00:54:20
Speaker
is not simply to be known for what he did, but what he said. I say in the book, if you were to ask him in the 1880s, what's the most valuable thing, the most important thing you've done? I don't think he would have answered governor of Maine, president of Bowdoin College. He was a remarkable speaker. And so I spend a whole chapter trying to understand the content of those speeches.
00:54:47
Speaker
And those speeches can still speak to us today. As we speak, there's a $10 million renovation going on at Gettysburg, a two-year renovation. It'll finally be open again in the spring of 2024 because of the crowds coming to Little Round Top.
00:55:05
Speaker
the foot traffic, the car traffic, the bus traffic, people want to see this person. So again, the question becomes, what is a hero? What background? What qualities? What influences? And I want to really just turn that question over to my readers and to your audience to try to answer for each of us that question today. Wow. A powerful thing to end on.
00:55:33
Speaker
Wonderful. Well, Ron, what are you working on next? Well, I'm working next on what I call unprecedented, the third act of John Quincy Adams. In all of our 46 presidents, only one returned to serve in political office. 17 years
00:56:00
Speaker
John Quincy Adams, who was smashed in the 1828 election by Andrew Jackson, who'd had a long career as a diplomat, secretary of state president, believes he's gonna return home to Massachusetts, write the biography of his famous father. He's tired of politics, tired of the criticism that he received as president. And yet Edward Everett, who the great speaker, who was president of Harvard said, you ought to run for Congress. And in age 64,
00:56:30
Speaker
He begins a 17 year career in Congress until his death at age 81. I think these are the finest 17 years. And there's a new organization out called the Third Act.
00:56:44
Speaker
And it's asking for people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, you have much left to contribute to society. I think John Quincy Adams is a poster child for the third act. Excellent. Yeah. I mean, if you can handle Congress, I guess, when you should be.
00:57:06
Speaker
That seems like a stressful way to end out life, so God bless him. So he took on the slaveocracy. He defended the slaves in the ship Amistad. He did remarkable things, more important than his four years as president for his term in Congress. Well, Ron, if people want to learn about your books, stay in touch with what you're doing, where can they find you? Are you on social media? Do you have a website?
00:57:33
Speaker
On social media, my website is www.RonaldCWhite.com. Wonderful. Ronald C. White, on great fields, the life and unlikely heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Go pick up a copy. Go check it out from your library because it's a really fascinating tale. And Ron, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you.