Replies

“No chemistry of frost or rain, no overlapping mould of the season’s recurrent life and death, can ever separate from the soil of these consecrated fields the life-blood so deeply commingled and incorporate here. Ever henceforth under the rolling sun, when these hills are touched to splendor with the morning light, or smile a farewell to the lingering day, the flush that broods upon them shall be rich with a strange and crimson tone, - not of the earth, nor yet of the sky, but mediator and hostage between the two.”

“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. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”

General Joshua L. Chamberlain 20th Maine Infantry Dedication Speech, October 3, 1886

No chemistry of frost or rain, no overlapping mould of the season’s recurrent life and death, can ever separate from the soil of these consecrated fields the life-blood so deeply commingled and incorporate here.

Beautiful.

I can hear the Hollywood script writers re-write and butcher that speech to their own version:

"Heey Everybody!! Lookatme! I' am PHAT!"

Thanks for that quotation of some of the mighty, profound words of a great American Leader.

Although afflicted with a speech impediment in his youth, Chamberlain overcame it to the point that he was one of the most eloquent and powerful Orators of his time. It greives me that he was never (as far as anyone knows) recorded, despite surviving for several years after the invention of audio recording technology.

Anyone who studies Chamberlain is struck by what an amazing individual we was; beyond his military and political accomplishments, he was a virtuosso Celloist, spoke 7 languages fluently, and taught all but one of the courses offered at the prestigious Bowdoin College - as well as being it's President for many years.

His personal integrity barred him from a promising political career, as he refused to compromise his principals in order to obtain the political support he would have needed for election to a Congressional seat in Washington.

He would have made one of this Nations finest Presidents, IMHO, had the corrupt politics of the time permitted such a fine Patriot and Scholar to breach the walls of Washington's fortress of patronage and graft to attain that exhalted a position.

In a time when our culture's "Adult Role Models" include profanity - spewing "Rap" and whoremongering "sports" Celebrities, how different a World and Country this might be had our people such a figure as Joshuah Lawrence Chamberlain to look up to and admire in our youth?