This is John Bachelor, conversation with the author Ronald C White. His new book is On Great Fields,

The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Chamberlain, a professor at Bowdoin College, Chamberlain, a man who had a great skill for many languages,

six, seven, eight languages. A professor who was drafted into the Union Army by the

governor of Maine asked to take the regiment the 20th Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Maine, into the Battle of the Army of the Potomac.

He saw much action, the event that celebrates his life ever since is the 20th main stand at Lour Round Top on the second day of the

Gettysburg Battle. However, at that moment, Chamberlain was one of many heroes and the

rest of his life he would tell the stories, all the stories, what he saw, what he learned in the battles from 62 to 65.

And then he had quite an adventurous life afterwards.

However, there was always controversy about some of the things that he said.

Was he the man who took the surrender of the Confederates at Appamatics Courthouse?

Author Ronald White answers the question here. Much more of this tonight.

Ron White, Ronald C. White, author of On Great Fields on The Appamatics Courthouse Surrender.

Well, this is part of the controversy as you suggest.

There is no written order.

And yet my mentor, the Great Civil War historian at Princeton, James McPherson, said to me,

not everything was written down in the last tumultuous days of the Civil War.

So I went to Appamatics to find out the truth.

And Patrick Schroeder, the park historian,

who has studied this for 25 years,

believes that

remarkable April 12 day.

...