School of War -  Ep 136: Ronald C. White on Joshua Chamberlain

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Ronald C. White, Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum and author of On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, joins the show to talk about the hero of Little Round Top, Joshua L. Chamberlain. ▪️ Times      •      01:37 Introduction      •      01:51 Why Chamberlain?     •      09:01 Fighting for the Union      •      14:05 The 20th Maine       •      18:10 Arriving at Gettysburg     •      21:34 The 15th & 47th Alabama      •      24:25 “Bayonets”     •      29:31 Fighting for Grant     •      33:40 Appomattox      •      35:53 Home     •      29:31 Battle Cry of Freedom Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

We haven't done very much with the Civil War here on School of War. That's not by design, but by chance. I grew up in Virginia surrounded by the physical history of the war. I'm totally fascinated by it and we'll resolve to do better as we continue this project. Today is an account of leadership and command during that war, the story of Joshua Chamberlain, who famously saves the day with the defensive bayonet charge at Little Roundtop during the Battle of Gettysburg,

but whose career throughout and after the war is almost equally impressive. Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stay on it. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds.

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram, and also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to be joined today by Ronald C. White. He is a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.

He is a biographer of both Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant, and he is the author most recently of On Great Fields, the Life and Unlikly Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Ron, thank you so much for joining the show today. Aaron, very good to be with you. Thank you for the invitation. So how did you come to focus on Chamberlain? You focused on these, well, I suppose he's a national figure as well, and in a way that deserves probably to be revived a bit.

But having written biographies on Lincoln and Grant, why Chamberlain next? Well, whenever you speak, people will always ask you the question, Aaron, what is your next book? And I happen to be speaking at the Jonathan Club in downtown Los Angeles. I live in Pasadena, California. And I sort of said almost flippantly, well, I'm not quite sure. Does anybody have any ideas?

And a fellow in the back of the room literally shouted out Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. Well, I knew of Chamberlain. And as I began to investigate the topic, I realized that the Chamberlain was basically the Chamber of the Civil War, very important, very central, but that he was so much more than that,

both before and especially after. So I was drawn to do what I call a wide angle biography of Chamberlain. No, and of course I expect to the extent that most people listening to the show are familiar with Chamberlain. They're familiar with some of the basic facts of Little Roundtop and Gettysburg, and they're familiar with the Killer Angels, as am I, and the film version, which I was raised on. I must have seen that movie 10 times.

Right, right. Good for you. Well, let's talk about the man himself then beyond the, it's Jeff Daniels, right? Beyond the Jeff Daniels portrayal on screen. He's an unlikely soldier. How does Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain become formed? How is he educated? What's it like to grow up like him? Well, part of my approaches, Aaron, to biography is to spend more time than many do on what I call the formative years of a person's life. When a person is 16, 18, 20, 22, 24. This is where I believe the values, the beliefs are formed.

So I was intrigued to find out, well, what was this for Chamberlain? He grew up in a deeply Christian home, 19, century almost versions of Puritanism. He went to Bowden College, which had, as many colleges did in those days, all of them really, a classical education, Greece and Rome, and teaching what I would call character education. What does it mean to be virtuous? His copy book, copy books were where you practiced your handwriting, the top of the book said, be virtuous and you will be happy. So I wanted to find out what were the values that really undergirden, Chamberman, and the unlikely hero of Little Round Top. And say a bit more about this classical education and the kinds of elites it form

because something that struck me going through your account of his life is he's, of course, extraordinary, and that's why we pay attention to him. He had an extraordinary, even if Little Roundtop had not occurred and he hadn't played the decisive role that he essentially did in the victory of the Union. It was an extraordinary military career, even without that incident. then we can get into that. But it seems unusual sitting here in 2024 that a man with leading the academic life he was leading,

with his mastery of, what is it, nine languages and everything that went into that, becomes such an effective and admired battlefield commander. So he seems unusual in certain respects. But the other thing that struck me was just how impressive, just to use perhaps unfortunate sociological terms, how impressive elite formation was

in the first half of the 19th century. I mean, my goodness, what it meant to be an elite in Maine and what it meant to be, what was expected of you, seems quite extraordinary by 21st century standards. So give us some color, some detail about how he's formed. Well, he's formed by a set of values, and one of the masculine values of the day was duty. And this would really inform what he did in the Civil War and afterwards. Also, he had a remarkable experience while he was a student in his third year, Calvin Stowe arrived at Bowden, an alumnus to teach religion. His wife was Harriet Beecher Stowe. And right at that moment, she began to write Uncle Tom's cabin. She had literally an epiphany in the church service on a Sunday morning and started writing this,

never imagining it would become a book. It was first serialized in a magazine, but she invited some students, and Chamberlain was one of those students who came on a Saturday evening when Harriet Beecher still would read chapter by chapter. I don't want to overemphasize this, but in far off Maine, I think this was the first time Chamberlain ever became engaged with the moral depravity of slavery, which would then be part of the reason that people would ultimately go to war. And say more about his politics, you know, through the 50s and into, so he's what, in his late 20s, turning 30 as the war approaches, what is his view on the great questions

of the day? And is he in the main, mainstream, if you will? Is he distinctive somehow in the way that Mainers look on national politics? Well, in a certain sense, Maine was really set apart from the nation. It was way up to the north. So yes, there had been, Henry, Lloyd Garrison had come through Maine, but not made much of an impact. So he was really formed around the whole understanding of the union. And I think that's a very difficult concept for people today to appreciate that this was not simply a political value. It was literally a religious value. So this is what formed him. And this is why he ultimately enlisted to serve in the Union Army.

But these men brought both their political values and their religious values to this war. What do you mean that the Union was literally a religious value? And as somebody who's written extensively about Lincoln, you're – probably better position to answer that than most. It is, it is again curious in retrospect to wrap our minds around that being the banner under which everyone marched. What does it really mean? Well, Lincoln believed that this nation was formed both by political and religious values, and that has nothing to do with the separation of church and state, but the idea that religion was at the heart and soul of what this country began and what it became.

And this was what it is for Chamberlain. Chamberl was really a deeply religious person, kind of traditional Christian values. And so these values, he thought, were up for grabs. How were we going to decide what this nation would be going forward? And this is why he was able to see the union is something very, very important. This wasn't simply about individual rights or even individual state's rights. He was about the blending together of a national union. and he very much was in that sense a fan and a proponent of what Abraham Lincoln believed about the union. So the war begins, and he's in his early 30s, teaching college. Right. And he doesn't join up right away. No. And I would imagine, but you tell me it would have been unusual for someone in his position and at his age, perhaps, to join up right away. But he ultimately, obviously, decides to write the governor and seek a commission.

What contributes to his decision? Is he unusual being a college professor? in his 30s joining up. Talk us through that. Good question. No one would have decried that he didn't sign up here. He's in his as you suggest his early 30s. He's married. He has two young children. And yet as he began to watch the boys, as he called them, serve in the Union Army. Remember, there were no electives in the 19th century. So he would have known every single Bowden student who enrolled and enlisted. Some were captured. Some were killed. And finally, when Lincoln offers his proclamation in July of 1862 that we need 300,000 more men,

he decides that it's time for him to enlist. He said, this war cannot simply be fought by boys. It must be fought by men of Saskatchew, who are willing to give up their best qualities. So he writes the governor of Maine. Governors were looking for what they called political generals. persons of influence might be politicians, in this case a professor, who had the ability to enroll and enlist a 1,000-man regiment. And the governor offers him the colonelcy of the 20th main regimen. And this is another sort of alien feature of the day. So the purpose of the political

general or political officer is recruitment, is to drive the numbers up because they're going to bring troops with them. This has a sort of Afghan militia feel to it. Right. Well, it does. And remember, there's also kind of a caste system. So the West Pointers looked down upon these volunteers, but Chamberlain offered himself. And then when the governor offers him the colonel seat, he declines. He said, I have no military background. He said, but I know how to learn and earn my way forward. So he becomes lieutenant colonel in the 20th May. And what does that look like to learn and earn his way forward? He is not, as you point out, a West Point graduate. He has no serious military training.

And yet here he is a lieutenant colonel, which in today's military would take an officer something like 15 to 20 years of service to arrive at that rank. You would have to hold, if you're in the infantry, as was Chamberlain, you would have to hold numerous commands along the way. You would have commanded platoons and companies, battalions. Yeah, certainly before you became a regimental commander. What does he do in a few months to be in any way respectable or equal with the responsibilities that he is being handed? Well, another Mainer at Delbert Ames is named the Colonel of the 20th Maine Regiment.

He's 26 years old. He's a West Point graduate. He's tough as nails. The men hated. They want him to be the first casualty in the Civil War. But Chamberlain understands seven years older than he's. Maine, Delbert-Aids, I can learn from him. And so he really studies hard. He takes all the lessons that Ames gives to him. And he rises to the occasion. And when Ames then goes forward to a larger,

more prestigious rank, Chamberlain becomes Colonel of the 20th May. You cited another officer of the time, a man named Edward Cross in your book, who says he will come to attribute the horrific casualties of the war, less to the advances in technology and rivalries and the collusion of new technology with old tactics and all the sorts of things that the casualty figures are typically attributed to. And more just a bad officership, which given the pattern of officer formation, which sounded a bit sort of every man for himself, doesn't seem like a crazy hypothesis. What is there to be said about that theory? And, you know, is this a way in which Chamberlain was unusual?

That is to say, if he looked to the Lieutenant Carle to his left and his right, would he see, would we see looking back officers who genuinely are incompetent, not because they're bad or evil people, but because, gosh, I mean, they have so little preparation for what they're walking into. Well, alongside of Cross, who Chamberlain probably did not read, he received a letter from one of the Bowden students who were just telling him complaining about the lack of leadership, almost knowing that Chamberman already had become a leader.

And so I think that, as you suggest, Chamberlain becomes a very distinctive leader. He works very hard at this. He said, I know how to learn and therefore earn my way forward. And what I found remarkable in writing in biography was all the witnesses' testimony of other officers commending Chamberlain. I say this because in recent years there have been critics of Chamberlain. did he fabricate, did he exaggerate, does he deserve all the renown that he now receives? Well, I wanted to find out, well, what did his contemporaries think of him? Over and over and over and over again, I found people commending his leadership,

commending his courage. I think this is very important to hear these contemporary voices about his, not simply heroism, but about his leadership. Tell us about the 20th Maine. Who are the men? What's the kind of person who's in the 20th Maine as a soldier? Well, the 20th Maine was really one of the last regiments form, drew men from all across the state, so most of them did not know each other.

They might be farmers, lumbermen, small shop owners. A thousand men were joined together without much affinity for each other except that they were serving their state. So a huge task was to mold them into a unit, into a fighting element, to do away with not simply their individual gifts or courage, but to make them work together. And Chamberlain understood that. And that was what I think, one of the great gifts of his leadership to produce a cohesive 20th Maine. We're skipping ahead here in the timeline, but it's just something that an episode that you cite in the book that illustrates sort of his sort of extraordinary just prudence, practical judgment, is this incident with the mutineers. This is when he's in the smallpox camp, or they've received

the smallpox vaccine, I think this is 1863, and he's given these 40 men who refused to fight anymore for, I guess, it's second main. How does he handle that? I mean, that's an extraordinary leadership challenge for any West Point graduate with 15 years of service, how to handle an incident like that, how to handle these 40 men. What does he do? Yes, I thought that incident showed his leadership. What happened was men signed up for what they thought was perhaps a two-year enlistment, And Chamberlain understood this perhaps not being completely honest. Some of these men suddenly realized, no, they'd signed up for three years. And they were deeply angry about that as some of their colleagues were going back to Maine.

So they refused to fight. And the order came if they refused to fight, you can not simply discipline. You might even shoot them. So suddenly they're coming to Chamberlain's charge. What will he do with them? How will he treat them? Well, he treats them with respect. He sort of says him, I understand that you may have been hoodwinked into your enlistment.

And I'll tell you this, if you fight for us, if you follow my commands, if you follow the orders that I give, I will treat you fairly. Very smartly, he also disperses them into different elements of his regiment. So they're not banded together, so they couldn't be a cohesive unit that could be in rebellion. I think this is a great example of his leadership of being firm, but also. so magnanimous at the same time. So Chamberlain and the 20th Maine, Chamberlain not yet in charge, come under fire numerous times before Gettysburg.

It's a very busy career for this regiment, which is today sort of just remembered for Little Roundtop in one respect justly so, but another respect, they fought a long war. Yes. So tell us about that prior to Gettysburg. They're sort of on the outskirts of Antietam, and then there's Fredericksburg. What are the major episodes for Chamberlain prior to Gettysburg? And what does he learn and how do these episodes develop him? Well, there's a number of skirmishes, but yes, at Antietam, they're held in reserve.

And Chamberlain really, as he looks at the whole battle, is critical of that, that they might have had a role to play, but they did not play that. At Fredericks-Burb, they're sort of in the battle, but not quite in the battle, but some of the men are killed. He sees the melee of fighting. He's not really impressed with the leadership that takes place at Fredericksburg. So they have all of these preparation, but not really prepared for anything like Gettysburg. This will be a whole new involvement in battle.

But they've been prepared by the discipline that he has given to them so that when they're caught up in a spontaneous situation, they respond. So set the scene for us then. This is the great moment that defines 20th Maine. We'll define Joshua Chamberlain for the rest of his life. Gettysburg Lee has invaded the north. There's fighting on the 1st of July. When does the 20th Maine show up in Gettysburg? How does it come on to the battlefield?

The 20th Maine really arrives at Gettysburg only on the morning of the second day. They've gone through a long, long marches several days before to get there. And when they arrive, Governor Warren, And that morning, late morning, looks up at the top of Little Round Top and realizes, to his dismay, that it's unguarded. And if the Confederates were to get to the top of Little Round Top, they could seize the advantage. For Little Rontop is situated at the far left of the battlefield. And so suddenly Governor Warren wants to do something about this strong Vincent, who is the brigade

commander, takes the men up to the top and says to Chamberlain, you are. to defend the far left of this line, hold this at any cost. And in the midst of the battle, just as it begins, Strong Vincent is killed. And sometimes part of the criticism is that Chamberlain doesn't give enough credit to Strong Vincent, but he does. So they're the far left of the Union line on the second day of battle in the late afternoon of July 2nd, 18. This is a bit of a digression, but one thing I just have to commend you for and your book for is that The maps are really excellent. And I have to say, you know, people still write good books,

but I think there is a systemic, secular decline in the quality of the physical books themselves. I don't know if you agree, Ron. But I'm kind of a book guy, and I have behind me all sorts of, I've got these beautiful, like I have a copy of Churchill's Marlborough that is a, it's unabridged, but it's a kind of compressed, you know, cheaper knockoff version of whatever the original version was. And it's from the 50s. And it is the most gorgeous object with all these remarkable foldout maps. And there was some publisher, some drone in a publishing house who clearly was passionate

about making this object as useful and beautiful as possible and that you just don't see that anymore. And your maps are really very good. So thank you for that. Well, I think it's so important because I think so many people have said back to me, you know, I have a hard time kind of even following the narrative of a battle. but your maps helped me to see what was really taking place. And what I also wanted to do, and the publisher completely agreed, was you will notice that every map and every illustration, photograph, cartoon is right at the place

where we're talking about it on the page, not a sleeve at the beginning, at the middle of the book, but right where it takes place, more than a hundred of these are in the book. Right. And so you see looking at the maps you have of Gettysburg, When you say that the far left of the battlefield, the military situation on the afternoon of July the 2nd is the Union Army is in this sort of convex position. So it has good interior lines. And then the Confederate Army is sort of wrapped around it. And the far left of the Union position, if it's broken through, just to be clear, at that moment instantaneously, the Confederates will be in the interior of the Union position, which is to say things will collapse.

quite quickly. That's correct. Yes. So those are the stakes. Chamberlain knows he has to hold quote at all costs. Who's on the other side? Talk about the folks from Alabama who are going to come contest this position. Well, in the way I write biographies, I really want to talk about the other side. This is William Calvin Oates, and I compare both his formation and Chamberlain's formation quite different. And yet he's a remarkable leader in his own right. And after the Civil War will become an Alabama congressman. And so he's a very skilled leader. He's leading a larger group than the 20th Maine coming up from the base of Little Roundtop.

And I wanted to give fair description to who these people are and they're fighting metal, which Chamberl and after the war will fully credit for their courage. And so say more about Oates. I mean, Chamberlain's such an extraordinary figure. I assume Oates didn't also speak nine languages. But if you had the 15th Alabama and the 20th Maine sort of standing next to each other, they basically the same kind of thing

except ones from the north and ones from the south. Are there other differences you would draw between the men and the formations? Well, Oates grew up in a very different family, not, his family did not want him to receive an education. He should be working on their farm in Alabama. He then spent three years kind of roaring between Florida and Texas, doing everything under the sun, carousing. He came back, however, and did get an education and did find the Christian faith, did become a lawyer, did become an editor of a newspaper.

And so he also had great qualities of leadership. And so this should not be diminished. I mean, he was a great leader in his own right. And in that battle, he lost his younger brother. and these were men fighting with great courage. And so I don't think that there's a huge difference in terms of the courage of the two sides. That's an extraordinary fact about the younger brother, because Chamberlain's brother is there as well, right? Yeah.

It's all these extraordinary little details that are so alien from any experience typically in the U.S. military today. Yes. Because he's got his – Chamberlain's got his brother there. And then what, the far left of the 20th Maine in the battle itself is commanded by his student, right? Yes, Alice Smyr, yeah. Yes, that's right. So there is a, I mean, extraordinarily tight-knit quality to these units. Beyond sort of, you know, band of brothers, rural comrades, because we're in it together.

Like, no, they're actually a family. They're actually, they go back years and years together. Well, you have so much experience in thinking about this and writing about it. I mean, I hadn't fully thought about that, but this is a much more contiguous group than we would find today in our volunteer army. Yeah. So tell us what happens. People may have seen the movie. They know Chamberlain wins.

There's something about bayonets. What happens? So Chamberlain's men begin to run out of ammunition. They try to pick up ammunition of their own fallen brothers, perhaps ammunition, even from the enemy. But they literally run out of ammunition. So in a certain point, Chamberlain literally offers but one word, bayonet. And with that moment, his men charged down the hill. and defeat the larger force from Alabama.

There's also two regiments from Texas coming up the hill. They rout them, they capture them, they kill them. And at that moment, he becomes the hero of Little Roundtop, something that will stay with him for the rest of his life. That particular 90 minutes changes his life forever. It's extraordinary, isn't it? Because it's the sort of thing where if there were some realization on the Confederate side of the desperation of the situation,

that Chamberlain's men were in. I mean, essentially out of ammunition. I mean, yes, it's frightening that they're coming down the hill rushing at you with bayonets, but if you could just kind of bully your way through that, or if the relieving units behind the Alabamians, Alabamians, yeah, yeah. Could simply keep their cool. It would still be all over, and yet just the psychological shock of that bayonet charge is decisive. I think that's a good way to say it, the psychological shock there,

sort of puts them back and they begin to retreat. Yeah. And that saves the union on the second day. I'm not overstating it, right? That saves the union position. If that flink been turned, the Union Army would have been, the best case scenario probably right is that it's forced to withdraw if it can withdraw on the order. And there are worst case scenarios. There are worst case scenarios where it's destroyed in part, if not a whole. And the very next day at Delbert Ames, the former Colonel of the 20th Maine, writes this wonderful note to Chamberlain congratulating it. So the whole idea, the question, well, did anybody at the time recognized how important this was. They did. This is not something of Killer Angels only or Jeff Daniels only or Ken Burns only. Ames understood this immediately and wrote to commend Chamberlain on what he had accomplished. Well, he receives the Medal of Honor later in life. It's for this, correct? It is. Yeah. So there's recognition in his life. Is the claim that he then becomes a myth maker after the war? And when people make that case, What is their evidence for it?

I mean, how do they, what is the plausible account that he's a bit of a myth maker? Well, they do, they do quibble or quarrel over what really took place. Obviously, he wrote, because he lived a long time, many different accounts of this. Sometimes the accounts change. He gets new information. He's continually reading regiment reports and battlefield reports himself. And so I think there's also a pushback. We're not sure we like heroes anymore.

And so when Chamberlain becomes this great hero, even at Gettysburg in the 1990s, when other people also were heroes, I was told the story that the Park Service employees wore underneath their official uniforms, a T-shirt that read Joshua Who, in other words, should this person receive all the credit where there's also many other heroes. That's perverse, in my opinion. I mean, yes, it would be childish to understand the battle of something solely fought by Joshua Chamberlain. He's a commander of a regiment after all. There's a whole regiment there, every man of which, not least the ones who died, deserve the credit. And he surely would have. In fact, I'm sure it did. I haven't reviewed, but I'm sure he says that.

But, you know, you need, you have to wrap your mind around things and it takes symbols to do that. And what better symbol than the man, the man who actually made the decision. And it's an extraordinary decision. At least I, and this is worth talking about. And this is, I don't know the answer to this. It's, I presume that there is nothing doctrinal in Union Army training at the time to say, if you run out of ammunition in the defense, you know, go right at them. I could be wrong.

I don't know. But it strikes me as an unconventional thing to do. Is it, is it his amateurism and sort of romantic, you know, literary background that inspire this? I mean, would a professional soldier in the same circumstances have made the same decision? I don't know. I don't know. And to me, the confirmation of his leadership is the military staff rides led by West Point instructors who bring the cadets to Gettysburg. And then over three days walk through, you are Chamberlain, you are Oates, you are Spear, and believing that Chamberlain's leadership today can be an example of how the army can function, obviously, in very different

circumstances. So if West Point believes that Chamberlain is really important here, I take their word for it. Right. So, and then the war goes on, and he continues to fight and to fight with distinction. So tell us about that. There's an episode at Petersburg where he's promoted on the spot. Tell us about the rest of Chamberlain's war. Well, 10 months later, Chamberlain is at Petersburg, as Grant now in charge of the All of the Union armies, is pushing his way towards Richmond on to Richmond. And Chamberlain is caught in a very difficult moment, recognizing that his men are about to walk forward towards incredible fusillades of bullets from the Confederate side. So at a terrible moment, he is hit by a mini ball that enters his left side, scrapes his bladder and urethra, sever some blood vessels,

and is stuck inside his hip on his right side. Two doctors come to him, tell him that he will die. He writes a remarkable letter to his wife Fannie believing that he is dying. And then fortunately, younger brother Tom, who we mentioned previously, rushes over to the 20th May and brings two other surgeons, the term they called for doctors in that day, who remove the bullet. And although doctors today who have written about this believe Chamberlain had a 10% chance of survival, he did survive.

And with terrible wounds, we're used to thinking of the Civil War with the wounds of amputation. But now scholars have been talking, I've been learned from this of what we call the invisible wound. that no one can see, but as are more terrible. This is the wound that Chamberlain suffers and will live with for the rest of his life. Yeah. Yeah. And is this, sorry, just is he, his battlefield promotion from Grant, is that the same incident or before or after this? This is right at this point.

So the word goes up the chain of command to Grant, who is told that Chamberlain will die. And Chamberlain and Grant will write about this in his memoirs. promotes Chamberlain quote-un quote on the spot so that Chamberlain's family and friends will know that he has the honor of in his death being a general of the Union Army. Quite a remarkable gesture on Grant's part. And he recovers, and by the following spring, he's back on the battlefield, right? He fights it. He's back on the battlefield. I mean, his mother says to him, don't you think that you've done enough?

He can barely almost not mount a horse when he returns for some time. of leave and restoration in Maine. He's a no, I've signed up for three years, and that's what I'm going to give. And so he returns to the battlefield and is a hero once again in the last days before Maddox. Yeah. So there's something about his career and his conduct in the moment, at the little roundtop, but some of these other decisions that he makes that have the quality of, well, it's to do with the Medal of Honor and the Standard for the Medal of Honor.

Something about that that has always struck me as, where it's worth. reflecting on is a standard for receiving the Medal of Honor is your actions must be of such a character that no reasonable observer would fault you for not of having done them unlike other awards for valor that you know that that that is an explicit condition i like that distinction erin thank you for informing me of that and and so his you know these decisions that he makes when he's done you know i think his mother's right you know he's done he's done more than anyone could reasonably expect Might as me, I've also been following with great pleasure this television show the last few months, Masters of the Air, which is about the 100th Brahma Group in the Air Force in World War II.

And there's a historical figure in that story, Robert Rosenthal, who completes his 25 missions as a B-17 pilot, which is beating the odds if you're flying those missions in 43, 44. And he re-ups. He refuses to go home, and he doesn't receive the Medal of Honor. But it's one of those things where, you know, no one would have faulted him for having not done it. And that strikes me here as something that you could apply to Chamberlain on several occasions. He would have been a hero, even without doing some of the things he does. Right, right.

Very good, yeah. I like what you're saying. So then he commands the ceremony at Appomattox? How does that come about? And what does that mean for him? Well, Grant has offered this magnanimous piece to leave at Appomatics, and then Grant leaves, leaves. And Chamberlain is given command to receive the surrender of the Confederate. Army. Is this a true story? Well, this is again part of the criticism. There is no written order

saying Chamberlain will lead the surrender. But my professor and mentor, Jim McPherson at Princeton, said, well, not everything was written down in the last 24, 48, 72 hours of the war. I then traveled to Abomatics and talked with Patrick Schroeder, the Park Service historian who spent 25 years studying this whole event. And I'm convinced, because he helped supply information to me, that Chamberlain was the person who led that surrender. So I tried to put myself in his shoes. What would it be like to receive the surrender of an army that had fought vigorously for four years? I think he had Grant's magnanimous spirit in his own mind. So as John Brown Gordon, Lee's General, given command of the surrender comes forward, he suddenly shifts his posture

and his arms to a marching salute. He literally is saluting. And I asked my readers to think about the question, what is he saluting? He's not saluting the Confederacy. He's not saluting the cause, but he's really saluting the courage of the Confederate soldiers. And John Brown Gordon, who is just taken aback by this, he's overwhelmed by it, we'll write about it decades later in a very famous book. He responds with the respect that he has been given by Chamberlain. Let's talk about post-war career of Chamberlain, which is remarkable. He doesn't exactly retire back to his farm. He does go back to Maine, but not exactly to a quiet private life.

He has some trouble in his personal life, which I think we should talk about. But he also has a public figure becomes involved in what you call the second Civil War. Let's take those in turn. So like a lot of soldiers who have been through a lot of violence, readjustment is hard. How was it hard for Chamberlain? Well, this is something that came through to me that on the one hand, this, for these men with the highest moment of their life, I mean, we can think of World War II people who have had that experience. My wife's father served in Patton's Third Army and was in the Battle of the Bulge.

You're in your early 20s, in Chamberlain's case in early 30s. this is something that will define you for the rest of your life. On the other hand, you come home and it's a difficult readjustment to family life with women who have been off and to step forward to do things they'd never done before. Chamberlain who'd enjoyed being a professor at Bowden College now finds being a professor at Bowden College pretty tame stuff. He doesn't find this very satisfied. So he's asking himself, what will we do in the next chapters of this life?

And how does it go with his marriage? Well, we don't know everything about his marriage. He's so delighted to return to Fannie, who he loves deeply to his daughter, Grace, his son, Willis, and he tries to settle into this life. But then suddenly the Republican Party of Maine steps forward, recognizing they have the hero of Little Roundtop in their midst, and they nominate him to be governor. And now he begins a whole new chapter of his life that will affect him personally

and also, I think, his family. And so he's governor, and then he, of course, becomes president of Bowden as well. Yes, he's governor four times. Maine had a strange term of office. It was one term. And I looked it up, and most men served an average of the one and a half terms. He's elected four times, which tells you something of his fame, not simply as the governor, but still he's the hero little round top.

Then his college, Bowdoin College, elects him president in 18, 71. He has another chapter in his life. I argue that more than almost anyone, he offered, he has more different vocations after the Civil War. What is this Second Civil War? What is the War of words in which he engages? When he speaks about the Civil War, what are the arguments that he's prosecuting? Well, I call this the Second Civil War because initially these men came home. They were the Saviors of the Union. They wanted to talk about their exploits, talk about their courage. But very quickly, people become locked in controversy. Well, no, it didn't happen that way.

No, he doesn't deserve the credit. No, this is the person who should get the credit. No, this is what happened at Antietam or Vicksburg or Gettysburg. And so Chamberlain, who remember he becomes professor of rhetoric at Bowden after arriving as a student with stammering and stuttering is his disability. He has the ability, I argue, to be a better speaker than any of the others who are simply willing to recount the battles. He can bring in allusions to the Bible. He can bring in quotations of Dante and Goethe, and suddenly he is the orator, quote, and quote, of this second civil war. So this is a bit off the wall, but I was struck by you're revealing that you're a McPherson student. Right. And I have a terrible confession to make for somebody.

who hosts a military history podcast, but I have never read Battle Cry of Freedom. I have it. It's right here on my shelf, and I haven't read it. And I thought I would just ask you, since I have you, what is the McPherson contribution to Civil War historiography? And why is this? Because I just came across somebody writing the other day that they had just reread it and had been struck by what an excellent and brilliant volume it is. What is it about McPherson's take on the war that seems to hold up?

Well, he's a phenomenal researcher, but even more so he's a terrific writer. And so he's able to put you into the war right there, then, and now. He's not standing at a distance. And he has the ability, what I would call, writing books that are both learned and accessible. And so this is a very, very learned book. He's just steeped himself in the history of the, the Civil War. But it's also a very accessible book. A 16-year-old could read this book and find it

very, very compelling. And that's why I think he's in his time, he's still with us, terrific speaker about the Civil War. And I just think, yeah, I think he's the very best. I mean, he's written eight or nine books on a Civil War. And each one of them, just, he has the neck of being able to get to the kernel of what really took place in each of these battles. battles, and yet put it in a larger context, a political context. He's out, he's the best. Well, I really enjoyed our conversation today, Ron. I'm just struck by, we talked about this a little bit at the beginning, but just first,

the extraordinary expectations that elites faced in the first half of the 19th century and how, I mean, just as a, as a group of people, they were impressive. And so you had men like Chamberlain and, you know, obviously on the other side of the thing, but Oates, you know, who were men of substance who sort of rose to the occasion in ways that, I don't know, I think about our elites today. And I have my suspicions about how people would fare if they were suddenly handed a commission as a lieutenant colonel, you know, given the command or second in command of a regiment. But then I guess my last question for you, even within that context, there's just something even extraordinary within an already extraordinary group about Chamberlain. And the person I recently rewatched Lawrence of Arabia, the great David Bean movie. And there is a, am I crazy?

There's a Lawrence-like quality to Chamberlain. There's something zany and not quite right. He's not quite well. And there's something about people like that that on a battlefield, if they are lucky enough, a strange thing to say about it's such a horrible thing, but if they're lucky enough to get this just unusual, awful, violent stage, they can finally perform in a way that They just can't, the world is just not right for them otherwise. Is that fair?

Well, I think that's great. I found myself asking, how in the world could this classically educated person become a risk-taking soldier? I think the risk-taking surprise himself and surprised his colleagues. And my audiences, Aaron, as I've been privileged to speak about this in the last four or five months, have said back to me, this is not simply a Civil War biography or a 19th century story. I think in the tumult of the present, we see the values that Chamberman embodies. And we say, oh, my goodness, this is the kind of person that we need today, the values that we need to lift up, not simply in the military, but in every sphere of our common life together. So I think that's why he is so almost contagious in terms of people's being drawn to him.

This is what I'm discovering. Ronald White, author of On Great Fields, The Life and Unlikly Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. This has been great. Thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.