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One of the most subtle distortions caused by history’s telephoto lens is the sense of predetermination. We know the Allies won World War II, as decisively as any conflict in history. But in London, 1940, such an outcome would have seemed unthinkably optimistic. The fact is, it was a very, very near thing. We look back on the Union victory in the Civil War with the same sense of it being a foregone conclusion. But it was not. By the second day of July in 1863, the mighty armies of the Union had been beaten in every major battle except Antietam – and that had been not much better than a tie. And they had not just been defeated. They had been thrashed. Whipped. Sent reeling again and again and again by a half-starved collection of scarecrows in homemade uniforms. None of this was lost on the Union men that morning, not the least on that Professor of Rhetoric from Bowdoin College. He had seen, first hand, the disasters at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. For those men, as for us today, the future was dark and unknowable. Yet history can often show where we are going by showing where we have been, in the same way that a ship’s wake extending to the Southern horizon is a sure sign of a Northward course. And that course, for the Union, for the United States as we know it today, was bleak. Were the South to win that July day, the first northern state capitol – Harrisburg – would fall to the Confederates. Nothing would stop them from reaching Baltimore, and Washington. If the Army of the Potomac lost yet again on this field, the South would very likely take Washington, the British would enter the war on the side of the Confederacy and the mighty Royal Navy would break the Union blockade. In the words of Shelby Foote, the war would be over -- lost. The Federal position was strong, but it had a fatal weakness. At the southern end of the Union line were two small hills. The smaller and nearer, called Little Round Top by the locals, overlooked the entire Union position. Artillery placed on that hill could fire down the entire Union line, wreaking carnage on the men below. The entire position would become untenable. No one was on Little Round Top. Across the ground that Pickett would cross the next day, this did not escape the eye of Confederate Lieutenant General Longstreet. He knew that if he could get some guns on that little hill the battle would be over. Indeed, the war would be over – won. He asked Lee if he could send his toughest men, John Bell Hood’s Texans and Alabamans, to take that hill. Lee agreed. Back on Cemetery Ridge, the Blue commanders realized, at long last and to their abject horror, the danger they were in. They immediately sent some regiments down the line to hold that hill, extending the left of their line up Little Round Top. And there, on the afternoon of July 2nd, 1863, history and the Professor of Rhetoric collided.




Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was an amateur. And everything he knew about tactics he had read, on his own, in a little book he carried with him in case it would come in handy. He knew that his 20th Maine Regiment was the extreme left of the entire Union army. In fact, he could look over to that man standing there, the one with the neatly trimmed beard: that fellow, right there, was the end of the line. Chamberlain knew the significance of his position on the field. He knew if he failed the Union left would roll up and crumble the way the right had a few weeks before in the disaster at Chancellorsville. He knew the Union could not bear another defeat of that magnitude. Up from the valley below came Hood’s men: fierce, shrieking, caterwauling demons, the same pack of wolves that had shattered the Union line at Gaines Mill and whipped and humiliated their opponents every time they had taken the field. They came up through the thin forest yelling like furies. Chamberlain casually walked the line, keeping his men cool, plugging holes and moving reserves while showing the utter disregard for his own life that commanders of both sides were expected to show during those horrible brawls. Repeated and steady volleys drove the Southerners back, but not for long. They came again. Again they were driven back. Again they came with their weird and terrifying Rebel Yell, and again they were knocked back by withering volleys from the 20th Maine. The Northerners were holding on, but by sheer guts alone, for each charge and counter-volley knocked more men out of the line, heads and arms and torsos exploding under the impact of the heavy lead musket balls. Worse, they were by now almost out of ammunition. The Confederates were skilled tacticians. When the men from Maine showed more determination than expected, they looked for a way around them, to hit the line from behind. Quickly they sent their men sideways, to the left, trying to get around the corner and attack from the rear. Chamberlain saw this. Armies could readjust themselves, but there was nothing in the little book about what to do with a single regiment. So he planted the flag, and on that spot, he sent men off at a right angle, like an open gate, to confront the flanking Confederates head on. Again they came on, getting right to the lines this time. Again they were shot and clubbed back down the hill. Again they massed for another charge, their determination to take that hill as strong as the 20th’s was to defend it. Only now, Chamberlain’s men were completely out of ammunition. During this latest repulse the Rebel veterans had staggered back down the side of Little Round Top under a hail of rocks being thrown by the exhausted men in Blue.




And so we come to this exact time and place. It is the 2nd of July, 1863, just south of a small Pennsylvania town. You are on a small hill covered with thin pine trees. Your face is black with gunpowder: it burns your throat and eyes, it has cracked your lips, and you are more thirsty than you believed possible. All around you are dead and dying men, some moaning, some screaming in agony as they clutch shattered arms or hold in their bowels. The field in front of you is covered with dead Rebels, and yet the ground looks alive, undulating, as the wounded Confederates try to crawl back to safety. In the woods below you can hear fresh enemy troops arrive, hear orders being issued in the soft accents of the deep South. You have no more musket rounds. There aren’t even very many rocks left to throw. And you know that this time, they will succeed. These men have never been beaten, least of all by you. You are a professor of Rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. As you walk what is left of your line, you know you have fought bravely and well, done more than could ever be asked of you. You have no choice but to fall back in orderly retreat. Your men are out of ammunition. To stand here and take another charge is to die. It’s that simple. These men are your responsibility. Their families depend on you to bring them home. Many have already died. To not retreat will likely condemn many more wives to being widows, not the least your own. You look down past the dead and dying men to the bottom of the hill. Masses of determined Confederate men are emerging, coming for you. They are not beaten. They are determined to have this hill. Off to your left stands Old Glory, the hinge in your pathetic, small gate. You know that this is a war to preserve a Union, a system of government four score and seven years old. Many said such a system of self rule could not possibly survive. If you retreat now, today will be the day they are proven right. You cannot go back. You cannot stay here. Your men look at you. You utter two words: “Fix Bayonets.” You can see the reaction on the faces of the men. No, that can’t be right. He couldn’t possibly mean it.But you do mean it. You know history. In the middle of this shock and death and agony, amid the blood and stench and acrid smoke, you have the perspective even now to see what is really at stake here. As Chamberlain walked his line one last time, he smiled, and shouted, “Stand firm, ye boys of Maine, for not once in a century are men permitted to bear such responsibilities!"

Excerpt from History
By Bill Whittle

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