47 Facts About Joshua Chamberlain

Joshua Chamberlain became a highly respected and decorated Union officer, reaching the rank of brigadier general.

Joshua Chamberlain became commander of the regiment in June 1863 when losses at the Battle of Chancellorsville elevated the original commander, Colonel Adelbert Ames, to brigade command.

Joshua Chamberlain was severely wounded while commanding a brigade during the Second Battle of Petersburg in June 1864, and was given what was intended to be a deathbed promotion to brigadier general.

Joshua Chamberlain died in 1914 at age 85 due to complications from the wound that he received at Petersburg.

Joshua Chamberlain was of English ancestry and could trace his family line back to twelfth-century England, during the reign of King Stephen.

Joshua Chamberlain's great-grandfather Ebenezer, was a New Hampshire soldier in the French and Indian War, and the American Revolutionary War.

Chamberlain's father Joshua served as a lieutenant-colonel in the Aroostook War.

Joshua Chamberlain's father named him after James Lawrence, and favored a military career for his son, while Chamberlain's mother wanted him to become a minister.

Joshua Chamberlain became a member of the Congregational Church in Brewer in the mid-1840s, and attended Major Whiting's military academy in Ellsworth.

Joshua Chamberlain then taught himself Greek so he could be admitted to Bowdoin College in 1848.

At college, Joshua Chamberlain was a member of the Peucinian Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.

Joshua Chamberlain taught Sunday school in Brunswick during his freshman and sophomore years, and led the choir at the Congregational Church-First Parish Church during his Junior and Senior years.

Joshua Chamberlain graduated in 1852, then entered the Bangor Theological Seminary for three years of study.

Besides studying in Latin and German, Joshua Chamberlain eventually mastered French, Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac.

On 7 December 1855, Joshua Chamberlain married Fanny Adams, cousin and adopted daughter of a local clergyman.

Joshua Chamberlain eventually went on to teach every subject in the curriculum with the exception of science and mathematics.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, Joshua Chamberlain believed the Union needed to be supported against the Confederacy by all those willing.

On several occasions, Joshua Chamberlain spoke freely of his beliefs during his class, urging students to follow their hearts in regards to the war while maintaining that the cause was just.

Joshua Chamberlain chronicled this night well in his diary and went to great length discussing his having to use bodies of the fallen for shelter and a pillow while listening to the bullets zip into the corpses.

Joshua Chamberlain was promoted to colonel of the regiment in June 1863 upon the promotion of Ames.

Joshua Chamberlain found himself and the 20th Maine at the far left end of the entire Union line.

Joshua Chamberlain quickly understood the strategic significance of the small hill, and the need for the 20th Maine to hold the Union left at all costs.

Joshua Chamberlain recognized the dire circumstances and ordered his left wing to initiate a bayonet charge.

Joshua Chamberlain sustained one slight wound in the battle, one when a shot hit his sword scabbard and bruised his thigh.

Joshua Chamberlain personally took a Confederate prisoner with his saber during the charge.

Joshua Chamberlain remained steadfast, and with his sword at the officer's throat accepted the man's arms and surrender.

Joshua Chamberlain stood upright for several minutes until he collapsed and lay unconscious from loss of blood.

The wound was considered mortal by the division's surgeon, who predicted he would perish; Joshua Chamberlain's incorrectly recorded death in battle was reported in the Maine newspapers, and Lt.

In early 1865, Joshua Chamberlain regained command of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of V Corps, and he continued to act with courage and resolve.

Joshua Chamberlain kept a Bible and framed picture of his wife in his left front "chest" pocket.

Joshua Chamberlain was thus responsible for one of the most poignant scenes of the American Civil War.

In memoirs written forty years after the event, Joshua Chamberlain described what happened next:.

Joshua Chamberlain was riding with downcast eyes and more than pensive look; but at this clatter of arms he raises his eyes and instantly catching the significance, wheels his horse with that superb grace of which he is master, drops the point of his sword to his stirrup, gives a command, at which the great Confederate ensign following him is dipped and his decimated brigades, as they reach our right, respond to the 'carry.

Joshua Chamberlain stated that his salute to the Confederate soldiers was unpopular with many Unionists, but he defended his action in his posthumously published 1915 memoir The Passing of the Armies.

Joshua Chamberlain left the US Army soon after the war ended, going back to his home state of Maine.

Joshua Chamberlain was originally offered the presidency of the new state university in Orono, but declined, hoping for the same position at his alma mater.

Joshua Chamberlain served as an ex-officio trustee of nearby Bates College from 1867 to 1871.

Joshua Chamberlain stayed in the State House most of the twelve-day period until the Maine Supreme Judicial Court's decision on the election results was known.

Joshua Chamberlain served as Surveyor of the Port of Portland, Maine, a federal appointment, and engaged in business activities, including real estate dealings in Florida and a college of art in New York, as well as hotels.

Joshua Chamberlain traveled to the West Coast to work on railroad building and public improvements.

In 1905, Joshua Chamberlain became a founding member of the Maine Institution for the Blind, in Portland, now called The Iris Network.

Joshua Chamberlain made his last known visit on May 16 and 17,1913, while involved in planning the 50th anniversary reunion.

Joshua Chamberlain died of his lingering wartime wounds in 1914 in Portland, Maine, at the age of eighty-five.

Joshua Chamberlain is interred at Pine Grove Cemetery in Brunswick, Maine.

Joshua Chamberlain was the last Civil War veteran to die as a result of wounds from the war and considered by some the last casualty of the war.

Unlike in real life, Joshua Chamberlain is overwhelmed, wounded, and forced to surrender, but he survives and returns in the third book of the series, Never Call Retreat.

The book Percy Jackson and the Sea Of Monsters by author Rick Riordan hints at Joshua Chamberlain being a demigod, stating that he single-handedly changed the course of the Civil War.