Killer Angel: Chamberlain

This is the last of 13 mashups of clips from "Gettysburg" (1993) that attempt to capture the motives of major characters from the film and its source, Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels. To go to the first and those that follow in order, go to    • Killer Angel: Harrison (the Spy)  .

Meeting Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as he made a speech to Maine mutineers, a thinking reader or viewer would believe he was there for the right reasons; here was someone to root for. It was tough audience, and one could sense Chamberlain's nerves as he began slowly, searching for the right words. But then, we're told, he began "to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow." Dismissing the reasons men had fought in previous wars, Chamberlain insisted "we're here for something new.... This hasn't happened much in the history of the world. We're an army going out to set other men free."

"My, Lawrence, you sure talk pretty," Tom Chamberlain told his big brother afterward. And it was true. But we should not forget what Chamberlain had done before the war: he was a Professor of Rhetoric - a Professor of Talking Pretty. We should not have been so impressed that he could make a nice speech. We should have taken seriously Chamberlain's own realization that the real challenge for him "was up the road a ways," where the whole Confederate army was converging on Gettysburg.

The most disappointing aspect of the film is the abbreviated encounter Chamberlain had with a "John Henry", a wounded Black found behind Union lines. In the film, the Colonel patted his arm, called for a surgeon to check his wound, and moved on. In the novel, however, Chamberlain was shaken by the revulsion he felt on looking at the man's "fat lips, brute jaw, red-veined eyeballs." He tried to rationalize his reaction as "instinctive. Any alien thing. And yet Chamberlain was ashamed; he had not known it was there. He thought: If I feel this way, even I, an educated man," might the reader - you or I - feel the same sense of doubt and shame if brought face to face with a challenge to our own most deeply held beliefs? "What if it is you who are wrong, after all?" Chamberlain asked of himself, and of us.

And if Chamberlain was having doubts here, how much deeper his doubts on realizing what he had done in the heat of battle. Ordered to defend the entire left flank of the Union Army, Chamberlain saw a gap in his line and ordered his brother to fill it, "like a warm bloody cork." Was it worth this? Chamberlain had no idea because, he admitted, "when the guns began firing he had ... completely ... forgotten the Cause." Out of ammunition as the enemy charged yet again, the Colonel found himself issuing unearthly screams to "Fix Bayonets!" and "Charge!" and down the hill we went with him, sharing his exhilaration: he had never been more alive than when he knew, any second, he might not be, and he couldn't wait to have this feeling again. And yet he knew that he, of all people, should not be enjoying this. He had become a killer angel.

Chamberlain told himself he would "have to come back to [Gettysburg] when the war [was] over. Maybe then [he would] understand it." But if Chamberlain, the idealist, was unsure, who could be certain? And this is the point of Michael Shaara's book, that this is the true tragedy of this war: those fighting and dying in it did not know if their sacrifice was worthy. Like Chamberlain, we should go back to this place four months later to see if Abraham Lincoln could help us find meaning in their sacrifice. And we should continuously ask if their descendants have been and remain worthy of their sacrifice.

The quotes are found on pages 31-33, 179-180, 363-365 in The Killer Angels.

When your instructor most recently visited Gettysburg, he and his companion hired a guide who took us to Little Round Top and confirmed in general terms the heroism of Chamberlain and the 20th Maine on Gettysburg's 2nd day, but he also pointed out that such heroic stands took place at many other sites and moments in the battle. The focus on Chamberlain's day at Little Round Top, our guide suggested, results in no small part from the eloquent Chamberlain's ceaseless self-promotion over the half century that followed the battle. His campaign culminated in the awarding of the Medal of Honor in 1893, and his image has been largely fixed by the account in this best-selling book and the film based on Shaara's novel.

You are not asked to withdraw the esteem you may have felt on learning Chamberlain's story in The Killer Angels or Gettysburg, but highly recommended is a short article on "Joshua L. Chamberlain and Civil War Memory" (http://werehistory.org/memory/), which offers a bit of balance to the account you have read and/or seen. The article also highlights the painful adjustment and postwar disappointments that Chamberlain, and many warriors, have faced in the aftermaths of their battles.