S8 Ep300: Guest: Ronald White. Chamberlain's early war experience included the massacre at Fredericksburg and a smallpox outbreak that sidelined his regiment. Under the tutelage of the disciplinarian Adelbert Ames, Chamberlain learned command strategies. The narrat
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 January 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Guest: Ronald White. Chamberlain's early war experience included the massacre at Fredericksburg and a smallpox outbreak that sidelined his regiment. Under the tutelage of the disciplinarian Adelbert Ames, Chamberlain learned command strategies. The narrative culminates at the Battle of Gettysburg, where the 20th Maine was ordered to hold the extreme left flank at Little Round Top "at all cost." Facing overwhelming Confederate forces and running out of ammunition, Chamberlain ordered a desperate, unconventional bayonet charge to sweep down the hill. In the chaos, he saved his own life by physically disarming a Confederate officer pointing a pistol at his head.
1863 GETTYSBURG
Transcript
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| 0:42.7 | I'm John Batchel with the author Ronald White. |
| 0:47.8 | His new book is On Great Fields, Life and Unlikeful Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, |
| 0:52.7 | a professor at Bowdoin College, a man who has nine languages and a wife and two children, and he's now semi-commanding the 20th Maine, a volunteer |
| 0:57.2 | regiment infantry, and they're following the Army of the Potomac, the Battle of Antietam in Pennsylvania. |
| 1:05.4 | This is 62, late 62. And what we have here is a man who wants to get involved, but because they're not called upon that day, they're part of the wing that is not thrown into the battle, I believe, the Fifth Corps. He watches it from a hill. What does he make of it, Ron? He's held in reserve, but he sees the terror of war, the incredible casualties simply within one day. |
| 1:33.1 | He doesn't even want to quite tell Fannie how awful war is, but he begins to understand that their maybe romantic vision of what they could do is now confronting reality. |
| 1:44.1 | General Hooker rides by, and he exchanges words with it. |
| 1:47.3 | What does he tell the general? |
| 1:49.4 | Well, he tells the general that the strategy was not really very effective, |
| 1:55.1 | that they should have done it differently. |
| 1:57.5 | And you should have put us in. |
| 1:59.0 | Should it put us in. |
| 2:07.7 | We go to Fredericksburg, and now his regiment, which is not blooded yet, as he understood it. |
| 2:17.1 | This is December of 62, and the frontal assault on the Lee's forces is a massacre. Where is 20th Maine in that assault? |
| 2:21.5 | Well, the 20th Maine is sort of caught in the middle of this, not really at the front, |
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