Medal of Honor · Civil War
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
Colonel, U.S. Army
- Date of Action
- July 2, 1863
- Location
- Little Round Top, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
- Medal Presented
- August 11, 1893
Values Embodied
- Courage
- Commitment
- Integrity
Official Citation
This citation is paraphrased from public-domain histories and is pending verbatim verification against the Congressional Medal of Honor Society archive.
For daring heroism and great tenacity in holding his position on the Little Round Top against repeated assaults, and carrying the advance position on the Great Round Top.
Biography
Before the War
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born September 8, 1828, in Brewer, Maine. He was a professor of rhetoric and modern languages at Bowdoin College when the Civil War began — fluent in nine languages, a minister’s son, and by every conventional measure an unlikely soldier. In the summer of 1862, over his college’s objections, he took a leave of absence, was commissioned lieutenant colonel of the new 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry, and went to war.
The Action
By the second day of Gettysburg, Chamberlain was in command of the 20th Maine. His regiment held the extreme left of the Union line on Little Round Top — the end of the army. Anchor that hill, and the line held. Lose it, and the Confederates could roll up the Union rear.
Waves of the 15th Alabama climbed the boulder-strewn slope. Chamberlain’s men, outnumbered and running low on ammunition, shifted, reloaded from the cartridge boxes of the dead, and held. When the ammunition was almost gone and another assault was forming, Chamberlain — according to every witness — ordered the bayonet. The 20th Maine swung out like a door on its hinge, charged down the slope, and broke the attack. The left of the Union line did not move.
After the War
Chamberlain went on to command a brigade in the final campaigns of the war and, at Appomattox, was selected by Grant to receive the formal surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. He removed his hat and ordered his men to salute the surrendering Confederates — a gesture remembered on both sides.
After the war he served four terms as Governor of Maine and then as president of Bowdoin College. He died on February 24, 1914, of complications from a wound taken at Petersburg fifty years earlier. He is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine.