Tag Archives: Daniel Chaplin

Film documentary Forlorn Hope debuts Monday, June 18

Building on the success of his epic documentary Sixteenth Maine at Gettysburg, filmmaker Dan Lambert will recall another hard-fighting Maine regiment with the June 18 premiere of Forlorn Hope on MPBN. Focused on the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment, Forlorn Hope will debut at the Alamo Theater in Bucksport at 2 p.m., Monday, June 18 […]

Did Daniel Chaplin develop a death wish?

  Did Col. Daniel Chaplin lose his desire to live after watching the annihilation of his beloved 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment at Petersburg on Saturday, June 18, 1864? Yes, surmised Pvt. Joel Brown of Orono and Co. I. And Chaplin’s own behavior suggests the behavior of a man who cared not if he lived […]

1st Maine Heavies dueled with Ewell’s best at Harris Farm

  Note: This is the second of a two-part article about the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery’s involvement in the Battle of Harris Farm, Va. Unable to break the Confederate lines at Spotsylvania despite repeated assaults, Ulysses Simpson Grant tried in mid-May 1864 to slip the Army of the Potomac east and south around the enemy […]

Lack of combat skills costs 1st Maine Heavies dearly at Harris Farm

  A few hours spent learning rudimentary combat skills could have saved many Maine lives near Spotsylvania Court House, Va. on Thursday, May 19, 1864. The modern Army’s concept of “Advanced Infantry Training” did not exist during the Civil War. The small pre-war Army primarily fought Indians in the far West, where parade-ground maneuvers drawn […]

Maine’s ‘Heavies” charged to the gates of hell: Part II

For a brief moment in mid-June 1864, Union troops could have swept through the wide-open doors of Petersburg to capture that Virginia city and its key railroads. Confederate troops would have fled Richmond, and the Army of the Potomac might have caught and destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia somewhere during that retreat. But Union […]

Maine’s Band Box Soldiers’ endured veterans’ scorn: Part I

  There stands at Petersburg National Battlefield a name-laden monument to a shattered regiment, the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery. Located slightly off the beaten National Park Service path, the monument honors the “604 brave members who fell charging here” on a late spring afternoon in ’64. Two bronze markers inset in the monument’s rear face […]