As the brigade he commanded attacked a Confederate battery on a hill
outside Petersburg in July 1864, a bursting shell blew Col. Joshua L.
Chamberlain from the saddle and wounded his horse. After the enemy
battery skedaddled, the brigade took the hill and dug in, and up came
supporting Union guns.
Chamberlain figured the day's fighting ended. Then an unidentified
senior officer ordered his brigade to charge and capture the heavily
defended main Confederate line. Chamberlain protested the order, then
complied, taking his men forward--until a bullet slammed through his
groin and left him mortally wounded.
Miraculously surviving a nighttime battlefield surgery, he returned home
to convalesce as a brigadier general following an impromptu deathbed
promotion. Struggling with pain and multiple surgeries, Chamberlain
debated leaving the army or returning to the fight.
His decision affected upcoming battles, his family, and the rest of his
life.
Passing Through the Fire: Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain in the Civil War
chronicles Chamberlain's swift transition from college professor and
family man to regimental and brigade commander. A natural leader, he
honed his fighting skills at Shepherdstown and Fredericksburg. Praised
by his Gettysburg peers for leading the 20th Maine Infantry's successful
defense of Little Round Top--an action that would eventually earn him
Civil War immortality--Chamberlain experienced his most intense combat
after arriving at Petersburg.
Drawing on Chamberlain's extensive memoirs and writings and multiple
period sources, historian Brian F. Swartz follows Chamberlain across
Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia while examining the determined
warrior who let nothing prevent him from helping save the United States.
