Book Review: The Autobiography of Joshua Chamberlain: The Major Writings

The Autobiography of Joshua Chamberlain: The Major Writings, Edited by Thomas A. Desjardins. Essex, CT: Down East Books, 2024. Hardcover, 155 pp, $28.95.

Reviewed by Brian Swartz

Rather than hear his words interpreted by others, Joshua Chamberlain speaks directly to history in The Autobiography of Joshua Chamberlain — and both the casual reader and serious historian are all the better for it.

The book’s five chapters cover Chamberlain’s life from childhood to Appomattox — and no farther. The general speaks freely; his words flow across the pages. Periodically inserting key historical clarifications and Chamberlain-related insights, editor Thomas A. Desjardins otherwise remains in the background.

Titled “The Autobiography,” chapter 1 dates to “the early 1890s when … for reasons he never made clear,” Chamberlain “began drafting the story” of his long life, Desjardin notes. “The entire work is presented here, complete with typographical and grammatical errors and words that Chamberlain struck through.” (1)

Writing in the third person, Chamberlain introduces his hometown of Brewer, Maine, parents, and childhood under the subhead “The Earliest Years.” Eschewing bare-bones details, he adds descriptive adjectives and phrases that particularly bring his parents, childhood, and the lower Penobscot Valley to life.

Chamberlain passes through childhood and into adolescence as Chapter 1 progresses. Some biographical anecdotes lightly cited by future authors appear in their entirety, such as the “good military school in Ellsworth” run by “Major Whiting of the U.S. Army” (22) and Chamberlain’s mid-teens’ school-teacher adventures. I enjoyed learning how Chamberlain loved the land and working on the farm; his interactions with the family’s mare and the oxen Buck and Bright are heartwarming and humorous. (26-27)

Chapter 1 also encompasses Bowdoin College, that persistently plaguing stammer, Chamberlain’s Bowdoin graduation and subsequent studies at Bangor Theological Seminary, his marriage to Frances “Fanny” Adams, their early years together, and his initial professorial career. Rich anecdotes abound; Chamberlain the civilian emerges from the pages before The Autobiography shifts to Chamberlain the soldier in the next four chapters.

And Chamberlain the professor of rhetoric is apparent in places in Chapter 1. His sometimes elaborate and obtuse prose and usually long paragraphs can require the reader to pay careful attention and, if necessary, backtrack and re-read a confusing sentence or passage. For example, Chamberlain left his Bowdoin education for a year after “a fever had worked deep into the blood, which showed a strange pertinacity, and mockingly offset the ‘tension’ by becoming itself intermittent and remittent.” The first time I read through that sentence, my reaction was, “What?” (53)

Just remember that Chamberlain crafted his autobiography in both his personal and late 19th-century writing styles. The knowledge gained about his antebellum life is worth the occasional confusion about what he’s actually saying.

The next four chapters cover specific battles. In these separately written accounts, Chamberlain shifts to the first person, and the reader benefits from the transition. Chapter 2, “My Story Of Fredericksburg,” is familiar to Chamberlain enthusiasts and historians.

Chapter 3 presents “Through Blood And Fire At Gettysburg,” as published by Hearst’s in July 1913. Desjardins stresses that Chamberlain was displeased with the published version, which he stated, “is much curtailed and changed by the insertion of ‘connective tissue’ by the Editor.” (85)

No original “Through Blood and Fire” manuscript survives, but Desjardin explains with his valuable footnotes those places where a Hearst editor likely changed Chamberlain’s copy. I urge the reader to experience Gettysburg through Chamberlain’s eyes and ears; there are additional details not always found in either the general’s initial July 6, 1863, reports or his post-Gettysburg memoirs.

 The Autobiography continues with “The Charge At Fort Hell” in chapter 4, encompassing the charge made by Chamberlain and his First Brigade at Petersburg on July 18, 1864. Chamberlain shares his great anxiety about questioning the initial unsigned order to charge the Confederate defenses. His vivid writing takes the reader along with the brigade, and the reader realizes along with Chamberlain that something has gone horribly wrong in that moment when “I felt with my sword hand a gush of hot blood.” (130)

The book concludes with “Appomattox” in chapter 5. Actually the “Paper Read before the New York Commandery Loyal Legion of the United States” on October 7, 1903, this chapter covers “my observation in the action at Appomattox Courthouse and the circumstances attending the surrender” of the Army of Northern Virginia (ANV), Chamberlain explains. (137-138)

Written primarily in the present tense, “Appomattox” kept me engrossed with the events of April 9, 1865, and April 12, when Chamberlain commanded Union troops accepting the ANV infantry’s surrender. “It was our glory only that the victory we had won was for country; for the well-being of others, of these men before us as well as for ourselves,” he writes. (155)

Desjardins enhances the battle chapters with his own highly detailed maps, which the reader will appreciate. The Autobiography of Joshua Chamberlain is an excellent contribution to Civil War historiography.