This is John Batcher continuing conversation with the biographer Ronald C. White on Great Fields,

The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

Hero on the Gettysburg Battlefield, President of Bowdoin, Governor of Maine, came a moment in

1880 when he was asked to stand up against a mob protesting a challenged election in Maine. And Ronald White here describes how he

handled himself before a crowd that was murderous. In Augusta, Maine, in 1880, 12 days,

writes Ronald C. White, 12 days that made

the hero even a bigger hero to the people he loved.

On great fields, much more tonight. And so as they, as there

literally is an insurrectionist mob approaching the capital, Chamberlain is alerted and he steps forward and faces the mob and says these words,

Men, you wish to kill me.

Killing is no new thing to me.

I've offered myself to be killed many times when I know more deserved

than I do now. Some of you I think have been with me in those days. You understand what you want,

do you? I'm here to preserve the peace and honor of this state until the right

government is seated, whichever it may be it's not for me to say. And as he

concludes his words he steps forward, opens his coat, and says,

if anybody wants to kill me for it, here I am.

Let him kill.

Well, with that, an old veteran steps forward and says by God old general the first man that

dares a land hand on you I'll kill him on the spot and with that the crowd

drifted away.

And I argue that this is Grant's,

...