20th Maine Quotes

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"[I am] not of Virginia's blood; she is of mine"

               - Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

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July 4/63 Battleground

Gettesburg, P.A.

Dear Mother,

We have had a severe fight, our Regt suffered severely.  Loss about 20 killed and 100 wounded, G Company 2 killed 8 wounded.  The Regt captured about 200 prisoners.

                                                      I am well

                                                      J.C. Rundlett

I have but 5 minutes to write this and get it to head Qrs.

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On speaking about the reasons for the way in which he (Gen. Chamberlain) handled the surrender of the confederates at Appomattox, Chamberlain wrote that his chief reason was:

"…one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, not the fact of death, not disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond; was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured?"

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And speaking at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in 1909 at he occasion of celebrating Lincoln’s birthday, he spoke thus:

"Great crises in human affairs call out the great in men. But true greatness is not in nor of the single self; it is of that larger personality, that shared and sharing life with others, in which, each giving of his best for their betterment, we are greater that ourselves; and self-surrender for the sake of that great belonging , is the true nobility."

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Chamberlain on the common soldier...

"However humble or unknown, they have renounced what are accounted pleasures and cheerfully undertaken all self-denials, privations, toils, dangers, sufferings, sickness, mutilations, life-long hurts and losses, death itself - for some great good, dimly seen but dearly held."