Chapter One
The Parting Sea
REVOLUTIONARY FAITH IN NORTH AND SOUTH
"One of the
Knightliest Soldiers
* * *
How could we help falling on our knees, all of us
together, and praying God to pity and forgive us all!"
-Joshua Chamberlain after the war
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain looked out upon the
masses of men streaming by, clad in tattered gray, and
ordered that his men salute the vanquished. Years of monumental
struggle, bloodshed, and suffering had ended
here, in this quiet knoll called Appomattox, where the
armies passed silently. Chamberlain ordered a "carry
arms" salute that spread down the Union line as they
faced the forces of Major General John B. Gordon.
Surprised, Gordon reared on his steed and saluted back.
The dignity of that act led Gordon to later call
Chamberlain "one of the knightliest soldiers" of the war.
In the person of this knight of the North coexisted the
twin strands of a warrior and a scholar, a deeply thoughtful
and religious man who bore the burden of his country's
call to take up arms against treachery, aristocracy,
and slavery.
His faith, honesty, and persistence in overcoming
obstacles marked Chamberlain's formative years. His
tenacity is best understood by a story from Lawrence's
youth. As the firstborn son of a Maine farming family,
Lawrence was well accustomed to brutal work, dawn to
dusk. One day, he was driving an ox cart and collecting
hay with his father when one of the front wheels caught
between two stumps. His father, a stern man, demanded
that he "clear the cart." Lawrence, thinking his father
couldn't see how firmly the cart was lodged, asked of his
father, "How do I do it?" His father responded forcefully,
"Do it-that's how!" Thus, Chamberlain, with all of the
force he could muster, did it. In his memoirs Chamberlain
said, "`Do it-that's how!' was a maxim whose order far
exceeded the occasion. It was an order for life that was
worth infinitely more than years of book learning and
dilatory resolution."
While his father wished the boy would go into the military,
his mother believed he should go into the ministry.
Ultimately, he decided to become a missionary, but he was
too far behind in his studies to enter Bowdoin College. In
nine months' time, Lawrence built a solitary study in his
attic and learned Greek and Latin with the aid of tutors,
passing the entrance requirements to Bowdoin. While
there, Chamberlain was forced to confront another shortfall:
a nagging stammer. He learned to overcome this by
speaking in a sing-song manner, not unlike how he would
sing as a member of chorus in church, and went on to
become a gifted orator and linguist. By his graduation
from Bowdoin and Bangor Theological Seminary,
Chamberlain was fluent in nine other languages. He
accepted a job offer as a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin
before war called him to markedly different services.
The path to war for Chamberlain must have been a
difficult one. He had benefited greatly from times of
peace: he had a beautiful family (his wife, Fanny Adams,
was animated and charming and the daughter of the local
pastor), was a beloved professor, and knew little about
the art of war. Nonetheless, he could not be restrained
after the Rebel victory at Bull Run led President Lincoln
to call for more recruits. Though the college tried to keep
him from entering service, he was committed to the cause.
He said of his willingness to participate, "I have always
been interested in military matters, and what I do not
know in that line, I know how to learn. But, I fear, this
war, so costly of blood and treasure, will not cease until
the men of the North are willing to leave good positions,
and sacrifice the deepest personal interests, to rescue our
Country from desolation, and defend the national existence
against treachery at home and jealousy abroad. This
war must be ended, with a swift and strong hand; and
every man ought to come forward, and ask to be placed
at his proper post."
Chamberlain considered the
Confederate attack on Federal
forces an assault on the sacred
Union, and the democracy it represented,
a nation which had
been paid for by the blood of his
Puritan ancestors, three of whom
fought in the Revolution. The
"jealousy abroad" he spoke of
was also no small matter: English
papers at the time praised the
South for ending the "horrible nightmare" that was the
American experiment of democracy and individual merit.
They believed the break-up of the Union would prove that
aristocracy and monarchy are the proper forms of government,
and that men of humble origins such as
Abraham Lincoln, or Lawrence Chamberlain, had no
business as leaders. In taking up arms, Chamberlain recognized
the risks and accepted the great sacrifices that his
involvement entailed.
Chamberlain requested a commission from the governor
of Maine and received the position of lieutenant
colonel under Colonel Adelbert Ames: the 20th Maine
Regiment had been born. Under Ames, Chamberlain
learned how to lead men and how to fight. Later, Ames
would be given charge of a division, and Chamberlain
would lead the 20th.
His body bore the proof of his dedication: in twenty-four
engagements-including Antietam, Fredericksburg,
Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania, and Cold
Harbor-Chamberlain was wounded six times. At
Fredericksburg in December 1862, where Chamberlain
led his men "up slopes slippery with blood," a
Confederate ball grazed by his ear and neck.
At Gettysburg on Little Round Top,
Chamberlain held the end of the Union line
against wave after wave of Alabaman
Confederates. Had he lost the position, the
entire Union flank would have been exposed,
and the Confederates would have swept over
the ridge and probably won the battle, and the
war. Chamberlain vividly described the battle
field: "everywhere men torn and broken, staggering,
creeping, quivering on the earth, . Things which cannot
be told-nor dreamed."
During the Petersburg campaign Chamberlain was
struck by a minié ball that ripped through his body, hip to
hip, shattering bones and cutting the bladder and urethra.
The injuries were so severe that the Union army sent out
his obituary prematurely, and the division surgeons predicted
that he had no chance of survival. Chamberlain,
however, hung on to life as he was transferred from field
hospital to hospital and quickly scrawled his wife a message
attesting both to his faith and love for her: "My darling
wife I am lying mortally wounded the doctors think,
but my mind & heart are at peace Jesus Christ is my all-sufficient
savior. I go to him. God bless & keep & comfort
you, precious one, you have been a precious wife to me. To
know & love you makes death & life beautiful . Oh how
happy to feel yourself forgiven. God bless you evermore
precious precious one. Ever yours Lawrence."
Chamberlain survived the encounter and after a period
of recovery in Maine returned to the field to again shed
blood for the cause of freedom. He justified his return to
war, in part, by remarking that "there is no promise of life
in peace, & no decree of death in war. And, I am so confident
of the sincerity of my motives that I can trust my
own life & the welfare of my family in the hands of
Providence." He went on to be wounded again
at Quaker Roads and continued to rally his
troops after being shot across the arm. His
fearlessness and bravery were such that, amazingly,
both his troops and the Confederates
who faced him cheered him on in that engagement.
Again, after that occurrence, the New
York papers mistakenly published his obituary.
"In great deeds, something abides," said
Chamberlain in memory of the actions that occurred in
the battle of Gettysburg, including his defense of Little
Round Top. Indeed, he was awarded the Congressional
Medal of Honor for the bloody task of holding the line
against consistent rebel onslaughts. In 1889, Chamberlain
would return to Gettysburg to pay tribute to the great loss
in words perhaps as stirring as Lincoln's:
In great deeds something abides. On great fields something
stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but
spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of
souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations
that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn
to see where and by whom great things were suffered
and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder
and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence
shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision
pass into their souls. This is the great reward of service. To
live, far out and on, in the life of others; this is the mystery
of the Christ-to give life's best for such high sake that it
shall be found again unto life eternal.
In years after the war, Chamberlain did indeed "live, far
out and on" as he became the president of Bowdoin College,
became Governor of Maine, and then went into business in
the last years of his life. For a man so visibly scarred by the
war, Chamberlain was the last man to die of war-related
injuries. In 1914, as he succumbed to his wounds, another
war another world away was beginning, but Chamberlain
can be credited with standing his ground and ensuring that
this nation would remain united under God.
* James S. C. Baehr
Official Proclamations
* * *
Both parties deprecated war;
but one of them would make
war rather than let the nation
survive; and the other would
accept war rather than let it
perish. And the war came.
-Lincoln's Second Inaugural
Address, March 4, 1865
In his second inaugural address, President Abraham
Lincoln recognized that people on both sides of the
Civil War were Christian people who looked to God for
assistance in the struggle. Both North and South "read the
same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes
His aid against the other." Both Northern and Southern
leaders believed that the morality and religion of the soldiers
were just as important to victory as was their fighting
strength.
Leaders of both sides issued orders and proclamations
encouraging Christian prayers and observances among
the soldiers and the citizenry. At the beginning of the war,
on November 15, 1862, President Lincoln wrote a letter
to his army commanders encouraging Sabbath observance
among the troops as well as the avoidance of vice and
immorality:
The President, Commander-in-chief of the Army and
Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the
Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval
service. The importance, for man and beast, of the prescribed
weekly rest, the sacred rights of the Christian soldiers
and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment
of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine
will demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be
reduced to the measure of strict necessity.
The discipline and character of the national forces
should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imperiled by
the profanation of the day or name of the Most High.
At this time of public distress, adopting the words of
Washington in 1776, "Men may find enough to do in the
service of God and their country, without abandoning
themselves to vice and immorality." The first general order
issued, by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of
Independence, indicates the spirit in which our institutions
were founded, and should ever be defended: "The general
hopes and trusts that every officer and man will
endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian
soldier, defending the dearest rights and liberties
of his country."
In July 1862, General Robert E. Lee
issued a general order to the army similarly
stating that all duties except inspection were
to be suspended on Sunday so that the soldiers
could rest and attend religious services.
When some officers began to use
Sunday as a gala day for inspections and
military reviews, General Lee issued a general
order reinforcing Sabbath observance
in the army as a moral and religious duty, as
well as contributing to the health of the troops. Only the
most necessary duties would be required on the Sabbath.
Inspections would be performed at a time that would not
interfere with the men attending divine service.
Both North and South continued the practice and tradition-dating
back to the earliest days of colonial
America-of proclaiming fast days and days of prayer for
the respective nations.
The most famous of these proclamations is undoubtedly
Lincoln's Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863, which
established an annual Thanksgiving as a national holiday:
It is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their
dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess
their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with
assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and
pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in
the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those
nations are blessed whose God is the Lord.
We know that by his divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this
world. May we not justly fear that the awful calamity of
civil war which now desolates the land may be
punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous
sins, to the needful end of our national
reformation as a whole people?
We have been the recipients of the choicest
bounties of heaven; we have been preserved
these many years in peace and prosperity; we
have grown in numbers, wealth and power as
no other nation has ever grown.
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten
the gracious hand which preserved us in
peace and multiplied and enriched and
strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these
blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and
virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we
have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of
redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the
God that made us.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that God should be
solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with
one heart and one voice, by the whole American people.
Continues.
