Regimental Image size: 11 1/2" x 14 1/2" Edition size: 750 S/N Issue price: SOLD OUT (when this is sold out it will only be available on our secondary market--call then for current price and availability--800-237-6077) a sprawling encampment of the Army of the Potomac near Falmouth, Virginia, on the chill, wintry evening of December 7, 1862, Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine Infantry penned a heartfelt and affectionate letter to his "darling Fanny." It was their seventh wedding anniversary. "I am happier tonight than on my wedding night," he wrote, "happier because we have lived and loved together….happier because I have not shrunk from the labors, hardships & perils that are demanded of Manhood - because in truth I think I have been tried as a man, and not found wanting." Chamberlain had worn the uniform of a Union officer for four months, and his sense of achievement came with the realization that his metamorphosis from Bowdoin College professor to disciplined soldier was now nearly complete. Within a week he and his comrades of the 20th Maine would be put to the stern test of battle, on the slopes of Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg. Chamberlain's wartime letters to Fanny chronicle that transformation from academic to warrior. Before Chamberlain and his regiment left Portland, his neighbors in Brunswick had presented him with a gray stallion, an animal he recalled as "the most splendid and famous horse in the region, with a full set of elegant equipments." But despite the trappings, when he departed for the front the 34-year-old still looked more the professor than soldier; his brown hair prematurely streaked with gray, and his angular features accented by a long beard that gave him a patriarchal air. He had much to learn about soldiering, but learn it he did, through the earnest tutelage of the Twentieth's commanding officer, the young West Pointer, Colonel Adelbert Ames. On the hard march across Maryland, past the carnage that lay in the wake of the fighting at South Mountain and Antietam; in muddy bivouacs along the Potomac; beside a smoky campfire in the Virginia highlands -- the fledgling field officer applied himself constantly to his new profession. "Col. Ames compliments my proficiency and says pleasant things about my natural adaptation to military matters," Chamberlain reported to Fanny on September 26. "I study I tell you," he wrote a month later; "And it is no small labor to master the evolutions of a Battalion and Brigade. I am bound to understand everything." On November 3 the Lieutenant Colonel provided his wife with a description of how he appeared after weeks of rough campaigning: "Picture yourself a stout looking fellow - face covered with beard - with a pair of cavalry pants on - sky blue - big enough for Goliath, and coarse as a sheep's back - said fellow having worn and ridden his original suit quite out of the question - enveloped in a huge cavalry overcoat (when it is too cold) of the same color and texture as the pants; and with the identical flannel blouse worn at Portland - cap with an immense rent in it, caused by a picket raid when we were after Stuart's cavalry, a shawl and rubber talma strapped on behind the saddle and the overcoat (perhaps), or the dressing cases, -- before - two pistols in holsters, sword about three feet long at side - a piece of blue beef and some hard bread in the saddlebags. The figure seated on a magnificent horse gives that peculiar point and quality of incongruity which constitutes the ludicrous…." Chamberlain recounted to Fanny another evolution in his soldierly persona, courtesy of Adjutant John M. Brown, that took place near Hartwood Church on November 22: "Mr. Brown took the opportunity today of cutting my beard to suit his notion of my face. He has left me with a ferocious moustache & my bit of an imperial only. The ends of the moustache he has waxed & twisted & they reach positively to the angle of my jaw (you have no angle on yours) & would almost meet under my chin. Mr. B. thinks he has me now to suit him - especially for a profile. You would not know me." He concluded his letter with a hopeful, yet what must have been for Fanny an ominous prediction: "We are on for Richmond once more & finally we shall take it this time you may be sure. But we have got to fight all our way from Fredericksburg, I suppose." And fight the Twentieth did. Though their losses (4 killed, 32 wounded) paled beside those of many other units, the regiment, as Chamberlain informed Fanny, "nobly stood the trial." It was a precursor, and a portent, of greater deeds to come. |
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