Joshua Chamberlain: Bowdoin Professor, Six Wounds and the Swinging Door

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Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was born in Maine in 1828, taught himself Greek in an attic to enter Bowdoin College, and became a professor there who taught nearly every subject except math and science. When war came he requested leave to study languages in Europe and instead joined the 20th Maine, turning down the colonelcy to serve as lieutenant colonel under West Point graduate Adelbert Ames. At Fredericksburg he spent a freezing night pinned on the field, sheltering behind the bodies of the dead. A botched smallpox vaccination kept the regiment out of Chancellorsville, and by Gettysburg he commanded it.

On July 2, 1863, holding the far left of the Union line on Little Round Top against William Oates's 15th Alabama, the 20th Maine ran out of ammunition, and Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge that swung like a door and swept the hill, earning him the Medal of Honor. At Petersburg in 1864 a bullet passed through both hips; newspapers printed his obituary and Grant promoted him on the field, but surgeon Abner Shaw saved him. He returned, was hit again at Quaker Road, and presided over the Confederate surrender ceremony at Appomattox, later serving four terms as governor of Maine and as president of Bowdoin.

• He had six horses shot from under him and was wounded six times himself.
• At Quaker Road a bullet was deflected by a framed photo of his wife and a Bible in his breast pocket.
• At Appomattox he ordered his men to carry arms in salute, and John B. Gordon answered by dropping his sword point.
• During a disputed 1880 election in Augusta, he faced an armed mob alone, opening his coat to show he was unarmed.
• Rejected at 70 for service in the Spanish-American War, he saw the command go to William Oates; he died in 1914 of an infection from his Petersburg wound.