Joshua L. Chamberlain of Maine was an academic and theologian by training, but he led his regiment to glory at Gettysburg, where he ordered the brilliant charge that avoided a Union catastrophe. He was held in such high esteem by his superiors that Grant accorded him the honor of receiving the formal Confederate surrender at Appomattox.

Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain left behind a quiet life and a career as a college professor to fight for the Union. Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson was a man of great religious faith who served in the defense of the Confederacy. And Gen. Robert E. Lee, who led the Confederate army, was a man who was forced to choose between his loyalty to the United States and his love of the Southern states where he was born and raised. As Chamberlain, Jackson,...

"Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North's greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate...