Here's to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

One of our military (and cinematic) heroes is Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose birthday today happens to be. (He was born September 8, 1828, and if only he had survived that leg wound at Petersburg that "eventually" killed him in 1914, he would be 177 years old now.)

All kidding aside, Col. (later Brigadier General) Chamberlain played a critical role on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, using some brilliant on-the-spot maneuvering with his men of the 20th Maine at Little Round Top. If you've seen the movie "Gettysburg," you know just what a key skirmish this was. And if you've seen "Gods and Generals" too then you know that Jeff Daniels played the role in both movies and was Absolutely Spot On Perfect for the part.

We would have done more research, perhaps, had not Robert of the Llamabutchers done it fustest with the mostest. So like the opportunistic piggy-backers that we are, we merely highlight the LINK for you and tell you to get yourself on over and get educated on JLC.

UPDATE -- We have to pass along a tribute that General Chamberlain wrote to the survivors of the Army of the Potomac who marched in a grand final parade on May 23, 1865. It was undoubtedly a bittersweet moment for most, the war now over, a president assassinated and huge question marks over the Reconstruction of a nation. Chamberlain, whose life would never be nearly so glorious again, wrote:

Sit down again together, Army of the Potomac! all that are left of us—on the banks of the river whose name we bore, into which we have put new meaning of our own. Take strength from one more touch, ere we pass afar from the closeness of old. The old is young to-day; and the young is passed. Survivors of the fittest,—for the fittest, it seems to us, abide in the glory where we saw them last,—take the grasp of hands, and look into the eyes, without words! Who shall tell what is past and what survives? For there are things born but lately in the years, which belong to the eternities.

People just don't write that eloquently these days, and too often today's heroes are best left unquoted.