The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Colonel Joshua Chamberlain - May 17th, 2004

1st Dragoon's Civil War Site ^

[SAMWolf]

Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
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FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.

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Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
(1828 - 1914)

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Joshua L. Chamberlain is perhaps most widely known for his role in holding the Federal position on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg. But before the war would end, the unassuming college professor from Maine would contribute much more than that.

Entering the Union army as a lieutenant colonel, Chamberlain would serve in more than 20 engagements, be wounded six times, and finish his service breveted Major General. His final honor would come when General Ulysses S. Grant designated him to receive the first flag of surrender at Appomattox Court House. The defeated Confederate troops, under the command of General John B. Gordon, anticipated the ultimate humiliation. Instead, they were met with honor and respect. For this, Gordon remembered Chamberlain in his memoirs as "one of the knightliest soldiers of the Federal Army."

The Simple Years of Youth

He was born Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain on September 8, 1828 in a cottage near the family homestead in Brewer, Maine, a farming and shipbuilding community. His parents, Joshua and Sarah Dupee (Brastow) Chamberlain, named him after the heroic Commodore James Lawrence who had immortalized the words "Don't give up the ship!" The eldest of five children, young Lawrence was raised as a Puritan and Huguenot (French Protestant) in a household which prized good manners, cheerfulness, morality, education, and industry.


The Professor from Maine

As a boy, Lawrence was fond of outdoor activities such as horseback riding at breakneck speed across the fields, swimming, sailing, and bird and flower watching. During adolescence, scholastic studies and farm work became of greater significance for the shy, serious, and dutiful youth. While plowing the rough fields, he learned from his strict and taciturn father that sheer willpower followed by positive action could accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Lessons as these would later be applied to challenges in his adulthood, resulting in great success.

Upon contemplating a career for their eldest born, his father, a county commissioner and former lieutenant colonel in the military, wished for his son to enter the army. Lawrence had already attended Major Whiting's military academy where he fitted for West Point. But his mother, a religious woman, wanted him to study for the ministry. Lawrence was interested in a West Point education, but the idea of being in the military during peacetime held no attraction for him. After much consideration on the matter, Lawrence agreed to enter the ministry if he could become a missionary in a foreign land, a popular career choice of the time.

A New Direction


Fannie Chamberlain - wife of Joshua Chamberlain

In 1848, Lawrence entered Bowdoin College at Brunswick, where he began using Joshua as his first name. During his initial years away from home, the introverted 19-year-old felt lonely and spoke little because he was embarrassed by his propensity for stammering. Joshua learned to overcome this impediment by "singing out" phrases on a "wave of breath." By his third year at Bowdoin, he had won awards in both composition and oratory.

As a student, Joshua had earned a reputation for standing behind his principles even when challenged by authorities. Throughout his life, this sense of honor would never desert him, even under fire. When not pursuing his studies, Joshua enjoyed singing and playing the bass viol on which he was self-taught. As the college chapel organist, he learned to play the organ quite skillfully on his own.


John Chamberlain brother of Joshua and Thomas who also served briefly with the 20th Maine and was at Little Round Top in Gettysburg with Joshua and Thomas.

While attending the local church in Brunswick, Joshua became attracted to the enchanting, dark-haired Frances (Fanny) Caroline Adams who often played the organ for the church choir. She was the reverend's adopted daughter and three years his senior, but this unconventional difference in their ages (for those times) did not matter to them. It was not long before a romance blossomed between them. The two became engaged the next year in 1852, after he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin. They would not be married until 1855, following Joshua's graduation from both a three-year seminary course at Bangor Theological Seminary and Bowdoin College with his master's degree.

In spring of 1856, Joshua was elected professor of rhetoric and oratory at Bowdoin. By 1861, he was elected to the chair of modern languages. Chamberlain was well-qualified for this position, having mastered multiple languages in preparation for a career in the ministry overseas. In all, he was fluent in nine: Greek, Latin, French, German, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Syriac. Meanwhile, during his early years as a professor, the Chamberlain home had been blessed with the birth of their daughter Grace (Daisy), and son Harold (Wyllys).


Thomas Chamberlain younger brother of Joshua and John. All three brothers served with the 20th Maine and were at Little Round Top during the battle of Gettysburg

With the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Joshua felt a strong desire to serve his country. Many Bowdoin alumni had immediately enlisted, and as time passed many men from Maine were wearing the blue uniform. Having already been granted a leave of absence for study in Europe, Joshua decided to offer his services in the military to Governor Washburn. Despite the displeasure of the Bowdoin staff, by August 1862, Chamberlain entered the war as Lieutenant Colonel of the 20th Regiment of Maine Volunteers.

Lessons for a Lieutenant Colonel

Under Commander Adelbert Ames, a recent West Point graduate, Chamberlain learned by observation about soldiering and being in charge of a regiment. He witnessed the transformation of more than 900 unskilled men into trained and disciplined soldiers. Among the officers of the regiment was Joshua's brother Thomas. Tom, the youngest of the Chamberlain's, was appointed a non-commissioned sergeant. Before the end of the war, he would serve as a lieutenant colonel.


Joshua Chamberlain and his wife, Caroline.

The 20th Maine's first order found them marching to the site of the battle at Antietam. But they would not engage in action until late September, in a reconnaissance at Shepherdstown Ford. In mid-October, they participated in another reconnaissance, this one led by Chamberlain at the South Mountain pass. Upon seeing the figure of a slain Confederate youth, Joshua was horrified and saddened to realize that some of the soldiers they fought against were as young as this 16-year-old. Sights as these would never be forgotten.

By December 1862, the Battle of Fredericksburg proved to be a devastating blow to the Union. In an article he wrote, published by Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1912, Chamberlain recalls his bone-chilling "bivouac with the dead" that night on the slopes of Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg. After this engagement, as the defeated Union troops were given orders to evacuate the town, Chamberlain was placed in command of his regiment to lead the retreat from the heights.



The remaining months of winter and early spring passed uneventfully for the 20th. The prevalence of small pox in the ranks kept them out of the Battle of Chancellorsville in the beginning of May 1863. During this time, Chamberlain requested duties to occupy his able-bodied men. Having learned a great deal since his enlistment, and demonstrating strong leadership skills, by the end of the month Chamberlain was appointed Colonel of his regiment.

[carton253]

Your daughter has asked one of the three most pertinent question of the Holocaust.

S. Giora Shoham has written a book called Valhalla, Calvary, and Auschwitz... a book that I highly recommend to your daughter.

Here's a brief analysis (just skimming the surface actually) of why there was so little resistance. It is the summary of one chapter of Shoham's book that I did for the class.

Shoham explores the reaction of both the Jews and the world to the Holocaust. Shoham frames the Jewish reaction against the reaction of the world. This provides the proper context. Looking at the Jewish reaction, without knowing the world’s reaction, would cause a warped perception of why the Jews seemed to go so willingly to the slaughter. Shoham explains that the Jews had a “time-honored Jewish tradition of placating their persecutors in Europe, [which] induced them to believe that the Nazis would also ‘settle down’ and leave them alone, provided they did what they were expected to do; work hard, be indispensable, comply with order, and God forbid, not be trouble-makers.”

The above sentence is not as simplistic as it reads. There was a reason why the Jews learned to placate their persecutors throughout their history. They had learned a very hard lesson. In times of great tribulation, they stood alone. No one came to their aid. Not governments, not the judicial system, not their neighbors, and, at times, not even each other. The Nazi era was no different. The Jews cried out to the world for help, and the world ignored them. The Palestinian Jews went to the British Government and pleaded for the British to disregard immigration quotas in Palestine and allow the Jews to immigrate. The British weighed the lives of the Jews against the wealth of their Arab colonies and the importance of the Suez Canal and sided with the Arabs and their own pocketbooks. They even returned escaping Jews to Germany. Europe and the United States were complicit in the murder of the Jews. They refused to perform even the smallest of tasks like bombing the railways to the East to stop the murders.

What is interesting is that this is the one motivation Shoham doesn’t attempt to explain. He exonerates the few governments that rescued their Jews. He commends the few people who hid Jews at great risk. But he indicts the world for their failure to act in even the simplest way. He leaves the indictment echoing through the rest of the chapter. Against this indictment, he explains what it was like to be a Jew in the hands of the Nazis.

Fear and betrayal were the twin companions of the Jews during this dark period. Not only were they betrayed by their Gentile neighbors, they were also betrayed by each other. Shoham notes, “Most of the Jews, the Judenrats, fought the Jewish rebels and were even instrumental in revealing them to the Nazis, because they were convinced that rebellious Jews exposed them to the vengeance of the Nazis.” Jews who escaped and found refuge with the partisans were betrayed by their fellow soldiers. The Sonderkommandos, who met the trains at the death camps, played their rôles well convincing the new arrivals that everything was going to be okay even as they led them to the delousing showers to be gassed.

The Nazis were cruel in their punishment. Shoham writes, “The collectivity of the punishment was meant to deter, to prevent organization for resistance, and to exploit the participant guilt the Jews felt at the knowledge that their innocent brethren were suffering because of them, to deter them from incurring the wrath of the Nazis.”

I like the way Shoham ends his book. He uses the last page to detail the resistance of the Jews. Not all went quietly into that dark night. Many did fight back. There were armed resistences in the ghettos in Poland. There were organized escapes from the death camps. Many Jews served as soldiers in the Allied army. Shoham says that many who fought were Zionists.

I don’t believe that Shoham mentioned Zionists out of the blue. He actually gives the reader the end result of the Holocaust. The birth of the State of Israel was a literal drawing of the line in the sand. “Here,” the Jews said, “In these borders, we will be responsible for our own defense. We will no longer go meekly into the ovens. Instead of the yellow star, it is the blue star of our air force, our navy, and our army.”

At the end of the assignment, I came to have a deeper understanding of the two distinct cultures that lived within Germany. Even though it sounds absurd, Shoham makes his case that the Nazi culture felt itself to be the victim of a Jewish conspiracy that kept it from reaching its destiny and conquering the world. The Nazis believed that they could only fulfill that destiny once the Jew within and without were dead. Even though I never blamed the Jews for not resisting what was happening, Shoham allowed me to see that throughout the centuries, the Jewish culture in Europe had struggled to maintain equilibrium in a sea of hate that would crash down around it when a national scapegoat was needed to explain away social or political disasters or shortcomings. The Jews had learned through the years to keep their heads down and wait out the current storm. Like Shoham, I would still leave the world indicted. There really is no explanation for why the Allies would not help once they found out what the Germans were doing. There really is no excuse for Great Britain not to throw open the gates of Palestine and allow the Jews to flee. I’m sure that some would argue geopolitical considerations, but when gazing at the victims of the death camps, geopolitical considerations seem to be inconsequential.

[Valin]

I remember when this happened. Some many of the talking heads were saying it was a mistake. I didn't buy that then...or now.
It's my opinion that he thought he could convince us that it was Iran, and so get us to come into that war on his side.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks carton253. I'll tell here about the book. Sounds like an interesting read.

She's been reading a lot about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Even hopeless resistance was better than no resistance.

The Jews had learned through the years to keep their heads down and wait out the current storm.

That in a nutshell is what I tried to explain to here, no one at first believed the stories of the DeathCamps could be true, by the time they did it was too late.

[SAMWolf]

Some many of the talking heads were saying it was a mistake. I didn't buy that then...or now.

Neither did I.

[Valin]

Sounds like a good book.
(In defense of the rest of the world)
I don't think the rest of the world really appreciated the fact that Hitler REALLY meant what he said, (about anything). The idea of a Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald...was beyond the thinking of civilized people.

I recall reading (Paul Johnson?) that before the end of the 19th century Germany was the best place to be in europe if you were a Jew.
It's not much of a defence I know, but it's really the best that can be come up with.

[carton253]

I think you make a vaild point...Who could have fathomed that type of mass murder.

Except, the Allies did know. They knew about the death camps... and they wouldn't do the very simplest thing as bombing the rail head into Auschwitz.

Furthermore, Great Britain knew and still wouldn't open Palestine up.

There were other governments who went out of their way to save their Jews. Why? Because they knew what was happening.

It had leaked out as early as 1942...

[Valin]

Yes but then you're a ultra-extremist-fanatic-rabid-rightwing-radical, so what do you know. You see sadam confused the Stark with one of the Iranian battleships, easy enough to do, could happen to anyone.

[stand watie]

GM, snippy!

free dixie,sw

[SAMWolf]

Have to agree about the bombing. Early in the war the camps in Poland were out of range (without Russian airfields for refueling) but later we were bombing just about everything else and we could have bombed the rail lines.

[SAMWolf]

..but then you're a ultra-extremist-fanatic-rabid-rightwing-radical

Thanks for the compliment.:-)

[SAMWolf]

Morning stand watie.

Free Dixie.

[stand watie]

had it not been for the leadership of LTC Chamberlain & the heroism of his lads of 20th Maine, i'd be writing you from a foreign country.

if the 20th fails, the ANV would have made a massive sweep down the ridgeline & that would have been that for the army of the potomac. and the END of the war.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

GM, Sam!

all good ole' rebels honor the service of COL Chamberlain.

free dixie,sw

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping and the link!

[SAMWolf]

There were a lot of good, honorable men on both sides in the WBTS.

[Valin]

Takes one to know one. :-)


I owe I owe it's off to work I go.

Back tonight.

[stand watie]

YEP!

free dixie,sw

[SAMWolf]

See ya tonight. Have fun pretending to work and hope your boss doesn't start pretending to pay you. ;-)

[stand watie]

GM, brother-in-arms!

free the southland,sw

[stand watie]

GM, miss feather!

free dixie,sw