Courage on the field of battle: Joshua Chamberlain

 

A friend of mine recently referred me to the story of General Chamberlain and his feats leading Union troops during the civil war.  The July 1863 engagement of Union and Rebel forces at Gettysburg is considered by many historians the turning point in the war. Here is an account of the battle at Little Round Top as told by the National Park Service archive:

Great gaps also appeared in the ranks of the 20th Maine. Chamberlain’s men were holding their own, though the position was becoming more precarious as the frightful minutes dragged by. Then an officer spied Confederates moving toward the regiment’s left flank. “I immediately stretched my regiment to the left by taking intervals,” Chamberlain wrote. “My officers and men understood my wishes so well that this movement was executed under fire, the right wing keeping up the fire, without giving the enemy any occasion to seize or even suspect their advantage. They renewed the assault on our whole front and for an hour the fighting was severe. Squads of the enemy broke through our line and the fight was literally hand to hand. The edge of the fight rolled backward and forward like a wave.” Shouts for ammunition filled the air as cartridge boxes emptied. Some men had a few cartridges left while others had none, even after rifling the boxes of the dead and wounded. Knowing that the next charge would break his thin line, Chamberlain decided to take the initiative away from the 15th Alabama: “At that crisis I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough. It ran like fire along the line, from man to man and rose to a shout, with which they sprang forward upon the enemy, now not 30 yards away.”

Battle of Little Round Top: final assault

With bayonets fixed, the 20th Maine charges down Little Round Top into the 15th Alabama. The hillside echoed with the distinctive metallic click of hundreds of bayonets on rifle barrels. With a cheer, the 20th Maine rushed down the body-strewn slope. The exhausted Alabamians were caught off guard by this audacious move and scattered. Those who ran eastward were caught in a hail of bullets from the 20th’s detached Company B, lying behind a stone wall 100 yards away. Confusion reigned as the 15th Alabama melted into the trees. “We ran like a herd of wild cattle,” Oates lamented. “On the top of the mountain I made an attempt to halt and reform the regiment, but the men were helping the wounded and disabled comrades and scattered in the woods among the rocks. The dead literally covered the ground, blood stood in puddles on the rocks. The ground was soaked with the blood of as brave men as ever fell on the red field of battle.” Assisted by soldiers from the adjacent 83rd Pennsylvania, Chamberlain’s men rounded up 400 prisoners from the 15th and 47th Alabama regiments, including a number of officers.

Thirty years later, Chamberlain received a Medal of Honor for his conduct in the defense of Little Round Top. The citation read that it was awarded for “daring heroism and great tenacity in holding his position on the Little Round Top against repeated assaults, and carrying the advance position on the Great Round Top”