Chamberlain -- Hero Paper

Chamberlain
Scholar to War Hero

11-14-08

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was the first of the five children of Joshua and Sarah Dupee Chamberlain. He was born on September 8th 1828 in the town of Brewer Main.

Chamberlain learned to read young and in his early years of school worked to learn Ancient Greek. He did this because he was looking forward to going to a good college.

Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine was the college he entered at age twenty. He was there from 1848 to 1852, four years later. Before he graduated, he met, and learned from some interesting people.

One of the people he met was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the writer famous for her book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Chamberlain actually listened as she read sections of her book before she decided to publish it.

Joshua Chamberlain graduated with honors from the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society and went on to Bangor Theological Seminary for three additional years of study before finding a place to start his career.

Fanny Adams was the adopted daughter of a local clergyman who Chamberlain married in 1855. They had five children, but one of them was born premature and two others died while still young.

He started out in a place familiar to him, his old school Bowdoin College, where he taught as a professor of rhetoric. After teaching every subject there, except science and mathematics, and could speak nine languages other than English: Greek, Latin, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syrian. The war broke out.

The firing on Fort Sumpter stirred many men to go and join the army. This was the same for the young professor at the little college in Maine. When he went to enlist, he was offered the command of the 20th Maine Regiment as a Colonel.

He declined this offer, saying that he wanted to "start a little lower and learn the business first”. So instead of being in complete command of the 20th Maine, they simply made him second in command.

Now commissioned as a Lieutenant Colonel, and not knowing a thing about how to fight much less command, his regiment went out to war.

The 20th Maine was sent to the battle of Antietam. Where they did not do any fighting, but were kept as reserve. After Antietam they fought at the Battle of
Fredericksburg under General Ambrose Burnside, where the 20th lost some men in the assaults on Marye's Heights.

After Fredericksburg, Chamberlain was promoted to Colonel, and the 20th made their way down to Gettysburg. Where they were positioned on the far left, or south, end of the Union army.

The story of Little Round Top is well known to you, and you know that Chamberlain amazingly and bravely led his troops to a bayonet charge that saved the position, and possibly the battle.

Some time after these battles, Chamberlain got very sick due to war wounds. And General Ulysses S. Grant appointed him Brigadier General, expecting this to be more of an honorary rank since many thought Chamberlain was about to die. Chamberlain did not die and served diligently until the end of the war, even receiving the medal of honor for his services.

After the war Chamberlain went back to Maine, where he worked as the president of Bowdoin College until he no longer could due to sickness. Soon after his retirement, he served four terms, totaling four years, as the Governor of Maine.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain died at age 85 in 1914 at Portland, Maine and is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery in Brunswick, Maine.

I see Chamberlain as my hero, because even young in life he knew what he wanted and went out and got it. But he also loved his country enough to go and serve it, even though he suffered personally because of it.