We return to our People of History series to study one of the generals in the Civil War - our person of interest is Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
Chamberlain was not of a soldier mindset - despite a short stint at the military college in Ellsworth - but his family had served in the military going back 3 generations including his father in the Aroostook War of 1839 with Canada, his grandfather with the War of 1812, and his great-grandfather in the Revolutionary War. When a local crisis caused spirits to surge for the plight of the union, Chamberlain was all too eager to join - though concerned for the well-being of the slaves, there is little evidence that Chamberlain did anything to help the freedmen after the war.
Bowdoin College, where Chamberlain was serving as a professor, did not want to lose the services of Chamberlain. The college offered him a year's salary to study languages in Europe in 1862. Chamberlain declined the offer and was soon made lieutenant colonel of the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
Chamberlain's Civil War career is greatly admired today due to the number of books that chronicled his service. John J. Pullen's The Twentieth Maine, Alice R. Trulock's biography In the Hands of Providence, and Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels (Angels was the basis for the movie Gettysburg where Jeff Daniels portrayed Chamberlain).
The Colonel is admired specifically for two events in the war: the skirmish at Little Round Top, (2 July 1863), when Colonel Chamberlain and the 20th Maine held their line against a strong Confederate attack on the second day of Gettysburg, and the formal surrender of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox (12 April 1865). One of Chamberlain's noted qualities was his chivalry. He ordered his men to salute the defeated Confederates as they marched by as an act of respect which Chamberlain held for his Southern brothers.
Instead of pursuing a lucrative career in finance or railroads like so many of the triumphant northern generals, Chamberlain returned to Bowdoin College in 1871 - he was encouraged to take up the presidency of the college at a low point in his financial state. Chamberlain, noting the changing times and the engineering prowess of the men he served with in the war, crafted the college's curriculum to include modern scientific and engineering subjects - a change that created a famous alumnus, the polar explorer Admiral Robert Peary from the class of 1877.
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