Tag Archives: Joshua L. Chamberlain

A Prince for Joshua Chamberlain

A surprised Joshua L. Chamberlain received a unique present before departing for war with the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment. Several “energetic friends” (identified by the Brunswick Telegraph as W. R. Field, S. R. Jackson, “and a few others”) purchased “a splendid dapple gray horse and trappings [saddle, bit, reins, etc.] to match.” Its previous owner, […]

The son of “Stuttering Pat”

Five Patrick Kelleys appeared before recruiting officers in Maine and enlisted in the army during the Civil War. Four likely exhibited an Irish brogue when speaking English. The fifth Patrick Kelley possibly spoke English with the developing Aroostook County dialect that added “r” to words lacking that letter (such as “Ka-tar-din”). Whatever his accent, this […]

The 20th Maine raids a black regiment’s sutler, part 2

While camped near Sutherland Station on the Southside Railroad in late April 1865, soldiers from the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment got into what became a bloody fracas with black cavalrymen and their white officers. Read part 1 here. The sutler selling food and other items to a black cavalry regiment from Massachusetts set up his […]

The 20th Maine raids a black regiment’s sutler, part 1

Did latent racism and a need to blow off steam trigger a 20th Maine mini-riot two weeks past Robert E. Lee’s surrender? Whether “yes” or “no,” the incident drew blood and cost the army several expensive horses. Let me set the stage and introduce certain characters. Commissioned a colonel on March 13, 1865, Ellis Spear […]

20th Maine: A warrior goes to glory, a bastard to prison, part 3

As the 20th Maine fought at Little Round Top, Pvt. George Washington Buck stood in the Co. H firing line. Buck had been a sergeant until the regiment’s bastard quartermaster, 1st Lt. Alden Litchfield, had physically assaulted the sick Buck in camp and then reported him for insubordination. The 20th Maine’s colonel, Adelbert Ames, had […]

Hell dumps a bastard on the 20th Maine, part 2

Among the privates assigned to Co. H, 20th Maine Infantry, was Theodore Gerrish, a 5-11, teen-aged farmer from Falmouth. Born in New Brunswick, he would become the 20th Maine’s first official historian, publishing his memoirs 17 years after the war. Gerrish remembered Sgt. George Washington Buck of Linneus as “a young man … a brave, […]

The 20th Maine’s Dirty Rotten Skulker, part 2

Of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment’s three original field officers, Lt. Col. Charles D. Gilmore developed the habit of turning sick when battle loomed on the horizon — or so Capt. (and later major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel) Ellis Spear believed. Looking back to the Chancellorsville campaign, when Col. Adelbert Ames got his coveted staff […]

The 20th Maine’s Dirty Rotten Skulker, part 1

Historians will tell you that a bad apple served too long as the 20th Maine Infantry’s quartermaster, but looking back after the war, Bvt. Brig. Gen. Ellis Spear — the left-flank commander on Little Round Top — remembered a particular officer as, to play with a 1988 movie title, a “Dirty Rotten Skulker.” A Warren […]

Death knocked often at the chaplain’s door

When stretcher bearers carried the badly wounded Brig. Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain ashore at Annapolis, Maryland on June 20, 1864, the news soon reached Reverend Henry C. Henries, the chief Army chaplain at the United States General Hospital in Annapolis. The War Department had opened the hospital on “the neat, comfortable buildings and beautiful grounds […]

Wherefore art thou, Joshua Chamberlain?

After three years spent searching, I finally “found” Joshua L. Chamberlain, just not where you’d expect him to be. Recently I wrote about using primary sources when doing Civil War research. Among such sources unique to Maine are the Soldiers Files found on microfilm at the Maine State Archives in Augusta. Sometime after the war, […]