These are the words of Joshua Chamberlain, the Union hero who won the Congressional Medal of Honor for the defense of Little Round Top on the second day of fighting at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. His story is featured in the Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara and in the film Gettysburg that was based on this book.
It is fitting that we think of him on this anniversary of his deeds. After Gettysburg he went on to become one of the war's most extraordinary soldiers and later the Governor of Maine. But I would like to focus on his other profession today. Prior to the war he had been a professor of Rhetoric at Bowdoin College. (He could read in seven foreign languages: Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Syriac.) After the war he returned to Bowdoin to teach and to become its president.
In his excellent book, Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg, James McPherson tells of Chamberlain's return to Gettysburg in 1886 to dedicate a monument for his Twentieth Maine regiment. Let us read more of Chamberlain's speech and his rhetoric:
"In great deeds, something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate the ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them...."
Done for us.
[Image: Little Round Top, 1863. It is from the Library of Congress Selected Civil War Photographs collection.]
Hi.my nane is Des. I am Irish. Today i was listening to my car radio. There was an interview with an Irish historian about Kilmahiam jail in Dublin (capital of Ireland). This jail was the site of a great number of executions of Irish patriots by British forces including the leaders of the 1916 easter rebellion. The historian was trying to describe the athmosphere inside the prison, she quoted several lines from "In great deeds something abides". I was so taken with these lines i wanted to know more. I checked the internet and read about Colonel Chamberlain at Gettysburg. I feel these lines could be used to describe any battlefield or any circumstance where great deeds were done and could describe the victors or the vanquished. Thank you for the use of your website to express my comment.
Posted by: Des Mc Donald | October 20, 2009 at 06:37 PM
Wonderful article, thanks for putting this together! "This is obviously one great post. Thanks for the valuable information and insights you have so provided here. Keep it up!"
Posted by: speech writing | August 06, 2009 at 06:23 AM