Episode 4: Chamberlain at Gettysburg

Transcript

Terry Johnston: Jessie, thanks for joining us. We have three questions for you today, all pertaining to Union colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s performance at the Battle of Gettysburg. First up is one from Michael in Michigan. He asks, “Did Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain really lead his 20th Maine Infantry at Little Round Top with a fixed bayonets charge?” Before you answer that, maybe you could set the scene for us. It’s the second day at the Battle of Gettysburg. What exactly is happening in the vicinity of Little Round Top and why is it significant?

Jessie Wheedleton: So, Chamberlain is the colonel of the 20th Maine Regiment, which is part of Colonel Strong Vincent’s brigade. All four regiments number about 1,400 men. And as the Union army’s been reaching the field on the second day, not everybody is here. So there’s 93,000 Union soldiers on the way. Part of that force fought on the first day, and on the second day, there’s still the Union VI Corps that’s been marching from 35 miles east of Gettysburg to get there.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain 20th Maine Infantry

Chamberlain and Vincent are part of the V Army Corps, and if you’re familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union position is in the shape of a fishhook, and it just provides this natural place to place extra artillery, extra infantry in the center to be used however needed.

So on the second day at Gettysburg, the Union army is set up on a defensive position and they’re pretty much waiting to be attacked for hours because it’s taking a while for the Confederate attack under General James Longstreet to get underway. And in that time of waiting, one of the Union corps responsible for the very end of the fishhook—Little Round Top through to the center—under Daniel Sickles has bumped out in front of the rest of the fishhook. Sickles moved to another ridge that he thought would give him a better vantage point waiting for this attack. But in doing so disobeyed orders to stay connected to the rest of the fishhook position.

And just as Longstreet’s cannon show up on July 2 on the western edge of the battlefield aimed at this position that Sickles moved into, army commander George Meade is just finding out how far Sickles really moved from his ordered position. So now, all of a sudden after hours of waiting around the battle is starting and the cannonading just signals to Meade that an attack is probably going to come from this sector.

So the V Corps is sent into action. And they’re sent everywhere. Initially they’re sent out in front of the Round Tops to try to assist Sickles on his line, which would be the Wheatfield in front of that position. And on the way out there, part of the force is detached and sent to Little Round Top when Meade’s chief engineer, Gouverneur Warren, realizes that, although there is a signal station on Little Round Top, Sickles did not have any regiments up there yet. So, Sickles isn’t going to be able to do it with his army corps and the V Corps is going to have to come to the rescue.

So the story goes, Warren’s staff go down into the valley beside Little Round Top. Vincent’s brigade is the last in line in his division. And Colonel Strong Vincent, who’s only 26 years old, he’s just been promoted to command the brigade, basically tells him they’re not going to waste time trying to go down the chain of command. He’ll just move his brigade to the hill. Vincent’s going to come up and scout out the position and he ends up placing the 20th Maine farthest into the woods on the side of the hill. The signal station can see off in the distance and they see the sunlight glistening off the rifles of the Alabama and Texas troops that look like they’re trying to go around Sickles’ position, which would put them on the flank of the entire Union line, and they’re starting to disappear off into the woods behind Big Round Top.

So, immediately when they make this discovery these wheels are set in motion. The Union officers know the first place they’re going to put troops on Little Round Top is not on the front open side of the hill. It’s going to be on the side facing the greatest threat to start with.

Terry Johnston: And this position, Little Round Top, it really is the end of the Union line there, right? Part of the consequence of the engagement that ensues there is that Confederates, if they’re successful in their assault of the Union position there, they can turn the Union line. Is that true?

Jessie Wheedleton: Well, there’s some debate as to how ready could the Union army be to push back on that if a small force of Confederates is able to hold the position. But overall, the big picture here is that right inside the fishhook, right behind the Round Tops, is one of two critical roads that George Meade has to keep open throughout the battle if he’s going to exist here at all. And if it looks like one of those roads is about to be cut off, he’s waited too long to leave. So Little Round Top, some people say, is more like the door to that happening, because it’s really all up to George Meade. If he feels that the threat of a presence of Confederate troops on that hill is enough to pull the army out of here, he might do that.

Terry Johnston: So back to Chamberlain. He’s in command of the 20th Maine. They’re at the extreme left of that Union defensive line on Little Round Top. The fighting begins. What’s his situation? And as Michael asks, did he ever order and lead a bayonet charge during the fighting?

Jessie Wheedleton: Well, I kind of understand the mess of memory that becomes attached to this story. This is the first major engagement for the 20th Maine in the war. They were recruited partway through the war, and they’ve been present ever since the Battle of Antietam, but not on the front lines in any sort of heavy action. So, Chamberlain hasn’t really had a chance to lead the men in a combat situation. But he’s been ordered by Colonel Vincent to hold the position at all hazards so the Confederates can’t get around the side of Little Round Top. In no case should you leave this position because it will compromise the whole position on the hill.

So Chamberlain, he’s got about 380 men. The size of a regiment has dwindled from 1,000 to an average of that, for any regiment North and South at the battle. And split into 10 companies—the company is 30 to 40 people. So, understanding the magnitude of his order and his position, he’s going to detach one company, Company B, even farther out into the woods to make sure he’s still guarding against Confederates going even farther around. But the regiment is going to be hit by an attack just minutes after they form into their battle line.

There’s going to be multiple attempts at their position. The woods of Big Round Top are pretty thick and dense as opposed to some of the other woodlots on other parts of the battlefield. And so you can’t really see people coming too far off until they’re pretty much right up on you. And in sorting out the back-and-forth action, we think the 15th Alabama Regiment might’ve attacked Chamberlain five times before this charge took place. That’s another story in itself. But, pretty early on, Chamberlain realizes that the two regiments attacking—mostly the 15th Alabama, part of the 47th Alabama—it’s allowing them to skirt farther and farther around his position.

The 15th Alabama has over 400, close to 500 soldiers in their regiment at Gettysburg. So, they’re on the larger side of average. Initially, in the midst of combat, people are hiding behind boulders, hiding behind trees. And in between surges, there’s still people left firing constantly at the 20th Maine.

So Chamberlain makes the decision to, as the regiment is firing, slowly inch people farther and farther down and make a pivot point at the left end of the regiment. He’s going to move the two flag bearers from the center of the regiment all the way down to the left. And as the soldiers shift toward the flags, they’re going to bend their line back to the left as they go past them—I’m doing this with my hands, but hopefully I’m doing it well enough with my words.

Terry Johnston: You are.

Jessie Wheedleton: Okay. So, as they extend the flank farther and farther, this bent back line hinges on the point where their regimental monument sits today on the battlefield. It’s that left side that’s going be hit several times after it’s been extended. And you just don’t really have a lot of time. Soldiers are carrying 60 rounds, maybe more if they filled their pockets, had a chance to grab more. But the only way you can sustain yourself against five attacks is by scavenging in between from the dead and wounded. Apparently, Chamberlain sent off for more ammunition, but it never got there in time.

And you’re just left with one option, when everyone’s exhausted, when you think you’ve taken all that you can take. And in Chamberlain’s initial battle report, the way that he describes what happens here is that he gave the order to fix bayonets and that nothing else needed to be done. And that’s the story. Even though he’s going to later mention that he ordered the charge, I think that story initially is closest to the truth. Because, imagine the electric feeling it gives an entire regiment as they’re starting to click those bayonets, everybody can hear it, and you’re getting ready for the fact that you’re going to have to look someone dead in the eyes the next time they come up the hill. You’re going to have to wait for them to get close. Who’s going to stand there and just wait with a knife on their gun for someone to come up to them and engage in hand-to-hand combat?

So, it seems like there’s some movement in the regiment as people are trying to shuffle to stay together. And pretty much as soon as Chamberlain is ordering the bayonets being fixed, the left wing of the regiment starts surging downward at the Alabamans that aren’t very far off trying to regroup in the woods. As the 20th Maine survivors are charging down the hill, eventually the side that was facing Big Round Top since the beginning leaves their position. And Chamberlain is right in the middle. He’s going to go with them. They scatter the Alabamans pretty much a third of the way up Big Round Top. And he’s trying to keep them from going too far. This is their first battle and it’s hard to contain yourself after everything that’s happened, I guess. And he eventually collects them and pulls them back to their position.

Considering this is the first time that he’s going to have to write an extensive report of something that happened and having to come up and down against the adrenaline rush of having your life in jeopardy over and over again, suffice to say that I don’t think anyone’s memories are being stored exactly correctly in that environment.

Little Round Top and Big Round Top at Gettysburg

Terry Johnston: Well, is he in effect—or do you think he’s in effect—saying in that report that fixing bayonets was all that needed to be done, that this was or could have been a spontaneous thing? Is that really what we’re saying here? Is that what he was saying?

Jessie Wheedleton: Yeah. And already that story is different than the story that makes it into popular culture, which is more of the later-in-life Chamberlain being asked to write articles that are then edited before they’re published by the newspapers. So, it almost seems like this kind of football game situation that develops—like he huddled everyone together and they come up with this idea to swing with the left and then move through the woods—is just Chamberlain trying to organize in his mind what he remembers this movement looking like as they’re going down, making the charge. It very much seems, especially in his first reports, that it just happened. There wasn’t really an option left.

Terry Johnston: Well, and there’s also the claim that a lieutenant in the 20th Maine, Holman Melcher, was the one to get the bayonet charge started from the center of the line where he was positioned.

Jessie Wheedleton: Well, yeah, Chamberlain has to write a battle report that has to happen quickly. But then, over time, people start talking to each other like, wait, what did you see? And so based on who your friends are, if you don’t remember exactly what happened, you start to latch onto people and go with what they said.

And we have this other soldier in the regiment, his name is Theodore Gerrish, and he writes an account that gives Holman Melcher the credit of ordering everyone forward, like saying “come on” or something. And he wasn’t even there. Later they proved that he was in Philadelphia, missed the battle. Who knows who talked to him to come up with the story. But other people say, well yeah, Melcher had this idea that there were wounded soldiers in front of where the regiment was standing at one point because the left flank had been pushed back pretty far in one of the Alabamans’ charges. So that Melcher proposes they move the line out in front of them so they can more safely get the wounded back off the field. And that when they’re making this movement to step forward, people just start going because Chamberlain’s up near the front of the regiment, ordering everybody to fix bayonets. And that could be true, like there’s this extra movement happening, it gets everybody excited, they’re fixing bayonets, and then it just kind of pours over the side of the hill.

Now, I’m not the person who’s going into the archives and doing all this research firsthand. The person who has done that, I think the most out of anyone, is a former ranger here at the park whose name is Tom Desjardin. And I actually read his account of this. He’s got this book, Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine, and it’s all about dissecting the Gettysburg story. And I feel like in his description for Little Round Top, he’s trying to make as many of these conflicting reports work at the same time. And it does kind of make sense.

Later on in the war, Ellis Spear, who is in charge of the left flank, he’s going to claim that he never heard the order to fix bayonets, like that never reached him. Which could still make sense because he’s down at the end. Maybe most of the regiment fixed bayonets, they see this movement, and everyone just starts going together.

But the problem is if you try to tell the story that way, it’s too much for people. Like, I would never tell the story that way on a tour. It’s just too much. You need to simplify it a little bit just to get the point of yes, they charged. And yes, it dispersed the Alabamans. And yes, the Union position was secure after that point. It’s the bigger picture.

Terry Johnston: Okay. Well, let’s get to our second question. This one was submitted anonymously and it reads, “Why has Strong Vincent been relegated to the backseat of Gettysburg while Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain continues to receive all the glory?” So, you had started to sketch out some of Vincent’s important role in the run-up to the fight a Little Round Top earlier. What exactly did he do there? And do you agree with the questioner that he’s somehow been relegated to this backseat?

Jessie Wheedleton: First of all, I would disagree, but we can get to that. I think the popularity of Chamberlain’s story has definitely fluctuated over time. It’s just this chain of events leading up to the right people being in the right place at the right time. You can back it all the way up to George Meade and how he organizes everyone in position in the first place. Warren’s got to get to the hill. He’s got to send messengers. He’s got to keep working while those messengers are out there to get more people after Vincent’s brigade arrives. Warren’s almost killed, a bullet grazes his neck. So he’s definitely close to the action in the midst of this. Some people even see him helping to wrestle the cannons in [Lieutenant Charles E.] Hazlett’s battery up to the crest of the hill.

And then, Vincent apparently makes this decision, breaking the chain of command. He’s a brigade commander. They need to find his division commander to change his orders, which were to follow everybody else toward the Wheatfield, in order to properly release him to the hill. You can’t just go grab another people’s guys. You have to tell their commanding general what you want them to do. Their orders, where they’re going, might be more important.

So, Vincent can sense that this is important enough. He’s going to risk this. He could be court-martialed for this, who knows? But later, General [James] Barnes, the division commander, says, oh, I knew about that. Everybody wants credit for it. But, you just got to go with your gut sometimes, you know that Vincent did make this decision. Not only that, but he scouts out a good position on the hill. He follows this rocky outcrop along the side of the hill and makes sure everybody is in a good spot just minutes before the Confederates arrive.

While Chamberlain is having the fight of his life over in the woods, the 16th Michigan is guarding the other flank, the right flank, which at that time is in the air. So at the time just the side of the hill is being attacked and only Vincent’s brigade is there. The left and the right are just as important of a position as far as whether they can hold the hill or not. And so at one point, one of the Alabama regiments that had been fighting at Devil’s Den starts to come up the hill and support the Texas troops on that side. And it extends far beyond the flank of the 16th Michigan. They’re being wrapped from the side. So Vincent steps up on a boulder so he can see down to them and orders them to hold the line. Apparently, his last words were “Don’t give an inch.” And the Confederates weren’t very far away. He was shot in the stomach and dies several days after the battle.

But the short answer is Vincent cannot speak for himself in the years afterwards. And some of the bitterness, I think, amongst the veterans long after the war, especially when we’re really heavily starting to monument the battlefield with the tablets that go in, in addition to the monuments, the tablets that are writing the story in the 1890s, you just have a lot of people at that point that feel after all this stuff is put out here, that there’s not enough credit given to some of these people that didn’t make it. There’s a lot of people that died trying to rush the front side of the hill. A lot of young, up-and-coming officers.

So, actually, I knew that the other guides would agree with me that we certainly don’t give Vincent a backseat anymore. I’ve been a guide for seven years now. This is my eighth season. And I was four years old when this Gettysburg movie came out. I very much joined the guide force I would say during an era of Chamberlain resistance. Like so many people had been having to tell the story of Chamberlain because everybody saw the movie, people read The Killer Angels, that they resented it and started shifting the story on purpose. Making sure that they stopped at the top of the hill whenever they could and made sure they mentioned Vincent or Patrick O’Rourke, who was also killed in combat.

So I polled the guides on Facebook this week. Not all of us are on Facebook, but 43 responded. We have 130 people that still keep their licenses current. Of the 43 people I asked, “Who is the person you talk about most often on a given tour?” twenty-six said Gouverneur Warren, nine said Vincent, three said Chamberlain, four said O’Rourke, and one said Norval Welch, who’s the commander of the 16th. That’s kind of an oddball answer, just to be different. But yeah. So a two-hour tour is the most common length of a tour that you give, whether it’s a bus or a family in their car, you only have so much time. So if you were to stop and tell the full story of the 20th Maine and see the view from Little Round Top, you’d be late. It’s difficult to fit in the first day of the battle all the way up to Pickett’s Charge and do that. So if we’ve got the choice of one or the other, we stop on the front side of the hill.

And you could say Warren might get more attention just because there’s a statue of him that’s pretty prominent on the rocks on the northern side. If you don’t talk about him, people are going to ask who that is. So, I feel like more of us talk about Warren, even if we don’t—I wouldn’t say we don’t want to, but I would say that’s most common today.

Terry Johnston: You mentioned The Killer Angels and the movie Gettysburg. I wonder what you think the movie gets right and wrong, specifically as it pertains to the fight on Little Round Top.

Jessie Wheedleton: Well, people are telling more of a story in their later accounts. Battle reports are more cut-and-dry than these more colorful stories that come out later on, which aren’t really as accurate. I always tell people when they ask me about the accuracy of The Killer Angels, it’s as accurate as a veteran’s memories of combat 20 years later. They remember they were there, they remember most of what happened. But their physical memory has changed over time. They can’t help it.

And it uses several accounts, but not enough to tell the story the way you would if you’re trying to get as close to the truth as possible. You know, more in a way that’s entertaining. And I’d say the biggest deviation from fact that the author took intentionally is to move Chamberlain’s regiment to a place where they can see Pickett’s Charge. Because there’s so much that happened in the three days and just at that point in the story, rather than introducing other people, it’s better to have people that witness that last event where [Confederate general Lewis] Armistead is coming over the wall. So that’s the biggest deviation from fact in the movie is that they weren’t at The Angle in Pickett’s Charge.

But then as far as the bayonet charge, it’s much more organized than I think it happened in real life. And it’s also probably a lot quieter than it would’ve been. So starting at 3:30, when Longstreet starts firing his cannons, Lee wants the cannons to fire all over the battlefield. There’s something like 300 cannons firing back and forth at each other until sunset. And on top of that, in the midst of this, they’re going to roll some cannons up to the summit of Little Round Top that start firing. So, they’re going to be right behind this. And so that’s adding to some of the confusion of who heard who say what, because it’s pretty loud at this point.

Terry Johnston: Was Little Round Top as heavily wooded as it appeared to be in the movie? From the photos taken not too long after the battle, it doesn’t appear to have been. What would those conditions actually have been like at the time as opposed to what the movie looked like?

Jessie Wheedleton: A lot of the wooded areas on the park at the time of the battle were grazed by animals and harvested. The farmers need timber. So that’s what the farmer had done to the front side of Little Round Top before the battle, he’s harvested the timber. And so there’s somewhat of a logging path that they can follow up the backside, but there’s no roads around the area. So, what they’re looking at from the side of Little Round Top is more dense than what they’re standing on. And they say a lot of the trees are smaller. They didn’t offer much protection. And this is one thing Chamberlain is upset about, the fact that the stone walls that were built by other troops after they left that night were left there. And it makes it seem like his men were hiding behind rock walls when they were fighting on the hill. They were just pretty much standing in this kind of thinly wooded area. They mentioned a lot of different boulders, like even the Alabamans, like huge rocks that gave them shelter. So I’d say more of the rocks are giving soldiers cover it seems.

Terry Johnston: Alright, well let’s go to our final question then. This one’s from Art in Massachusetts: “Why is there no monument or memorial to Joshua Chamberlain at Little Round Top on the Gettysburg Battlefield? I’ve read he was approached about it and even given a possible location for one, but that he never seemed interested or willing to push for one, which seems to contradict the narrative that after the war, Chamberlain aggressively promoted himself and the role he played in the Union victory at Gettysburg. What’s the real story?”

Jessie Wheedleton: I just think there’s a line between writing about your experience and having a giant statue of yourself and putting it up while you’re alive. It’s not something that is normal on the Gettysburg Battlefield. I’m not even sure, there might be some people who are alive when they get the portrait statues on the Pennsylvania Monument, but I was looking through all of the statues of people on the park. And Chamberlain also lives an unusually long time. He dies in 1914. And it’s not too long before he dies that they’re trying to figure out if they’re going to do a monument where they’re going to put it.

And it’s largely the state of Maine who’s already approving funding for a monument to Oliver Howard on Cemetery Hill. Now, he’s a corps commander. But Gettysburg is the place where people come to visit the whole war. If they’re going to visit one Civil War battlefield, usually this is the one. So the state of Maine is looking at this as their way to recognize Chamberlain, not just for what he did at Gettysburg, but for his eventual promotion to brigadier general and his brevet promotion to major general, accepting the surrender at Appomattox. There’s a lot more to his story. He is wounded several times.

A friend of mine is working on a project, Rich Goedkoop is another one of the guides, and he likes to dive into subjects that people haven’t gone into that much yet. And he’s doing one project that’s all about the Pennsylvania State Memorial. They’re trying to get the memorial done for the 50th anniversary. And Chamberlain is on the Maine State Anniversary Committee. Like everybody’s got representatives from their states that are helping this come together. And Chamberlain visits the battlefield before the reunion, but he’s not feeling well and doesn’t actually make it in 1913 to the reunion.

But there’s record of him coming here and visiting with one of the War Department commissioners, John Page Nicholson, who was a veteran of the Battle of Gettysburg. He’s in his twenties, Chamberlain’s in his thirties during the battle. And Nicholson is a big Chamberlain fan as well. Not sure who the representative from Maine was that was also the fan and wanted this to happen, but they mentioned trying to get him to decide on a spot and he’s just not responding to their letters. Then he takes them out there and he doesn’t seem like he wants to do it.

There’s only one other monument to a person that is a lower rank than colonel, Major William Wells, who was another Medal of Honor recipient for a cavalry charge on Big Round Top. But again, it’s kind of unusual to find a place for a monument to yourself while you’re alive. And I just think that’s where he drew the line.

Terry Johnston: Okay, well, that was the final question, although are there any final thoughts or words on Chamberlain’s role at Gettysburg that we haven’t brought up that you think are important to share?

Jessie Wheedleton: Yeah, I was on that bandwagon of not wanting to give Chamberlain too much credit, thinking maybe he spoke too highly of the purpose and everything, and I think that’s what kind of rubbed some people the wrong way about his writings after the war. But I’ve come to think over time that Chamberlain is in person different than the person we perceive in his writing. Throughout the war, throughout his service in the regiment, people like him. Even Ellis Spear, who criticizes him pretty harshly sometimes, apparently is still trying to push to get Chamberlain’s pension increased in his later years. And he doesn’t want him to know about it. So they still remained acquaintances or even friends throughout their life.

Sometimes it’s hard to get to know people when there’s too much information out there, to try to get to know who they really were. I think a lot of what impressed people about Chamberlain was something that they saw in person. He does an excellent job managing the entire battle line. He’s got to make sure on Little Round Top he’s staying connected to the right flank. He’s dealing with an ever-changing situation on the left. And then they’re ordered to keep going and try to occupy Big Round Top that night. So, all day he is very much calm and collected and making sure everybody knows what they’re expected to do. The fact that he was able to perform the way that he did in the first major action is something remarkable.

About the Guest

Jessie Wheedleton is a Licensed Battlefield Guide at Gettysburg National Military Park, a position she’s held since 2018.

Additional Resources

Gettysburg battle map published in 1863
Thomas A. Desjardin, Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign (2009)
Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (1974)
Gettysburg (1993)

Transcript

About the Guest

Additional Resources

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