Tag Archives: Joel Brown

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 […]

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 […]