The Twentieth Maine: A Volunteer Regiment In The Civil War, by John Pullen

When I signed up to be a Civil War reenactor with the volunteer 1st Oregon/20th Maine [1], my first assignment was to acquire and read a copy of this classic regimental history, and I was able to snag a lovely and only lightly used autographed copy of the book for a very reasonable price. It is easy to see, upon looking at this book, why this regimental history was chosen as a reading assignment. Although this particular edition of the book was published in 1997, the book was originally written before then, and it manages to combine an excellent style with immense value in terms of facts and trivia. Although the book is a regimental history about the 20th Maine, it manages to provide a comparative look at other regiments (particularly the 2nd Maine and most of all the 118th Pennsylvania) with whom the regiment interacted closely over the long period of the Civil War. Additionally, the book spends a fair amount of its space chronicling those officers who served originally in the 20th Maine but who were later promoted to higher levels, most notably Adalbert Ames (the regiment’s first colonel), Ellis Spear, and Joshua Chamberlain, who is given a particularly praiseworthy account here on account of his high degree of skill as an officer and for the way in which he used his analytical mind to deal with situations by being a “scientific worrier.” The book spends most of its time on those people who generated the texts upon which the book depends, and that means either the most literate among the enlisted soldiers, some of whom kept diaries and wrote letters, as well as the officers, whose writing (particularly those of Joshua Chamberlain) were much more extensive.

In terms of its contents, the book has a somewhat old-fashioned but pleasant tendency to take a quote from a letter or diary and apply it to the particular time period discussed in a given chapter. The book is organized mostly chronologically, with some glances backward and forward, beginning with the mustering of the regiment, its placement in the reserves at Anteitam as an untrained raw regiment, its baptism of fire at Gettysburg, its glorious success as the end of the Union line at Little Round Top in Gettysburg, and the way in which the regiment suffered tremendously due to the grinding Wilderness and Spotsylvania campaigns and the siege at Petersburg, which receives full treatment here, all the way to its mustering out after the Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac after more glory at Appomattox, a time when, ironically enough, the regiment was at its hungriest for having outmarched its food. Along the way, the book talks about tactics, about the music of the Civil War (courtesy of Dan Butterfield), about the suicidal orders that were often given to regiments, and even a bit of character analysis about such figures as Grant and Burnside. Overall, the tone is fair-minded, witty, and full of detailed research, much of it finds its way into worthwhile trivia. The author also strives to give honor even to the adversaries of the 20th Maine, including the gallant men of Alabama who were driven back as a result of the bayonet charge at the Little Round Top, or the gallant General Gordon who responded to Chamberlain’s chivalrous gesture at Appomattox with one of his own.

Besides the worth of this book as a regimental history, a genre of Civil War history I must admit being largely unfamiliar with up to this point, being more familiar with more general overviews, topical works, battle or campaign studies, or individual biographies, the book has a lot to offer for the interested reader. There is excellent hand-drawn map work to be found, a few photos of great interest, and also occasional material that is highly quotable, like this remark about Grant on page 194: “That little fellow, Grant! He hadn’t won, but he was acting like a winner. Here at last was a general who was going to get this thing over with. In three days he had taken them straight into hell and it looked like there would be more of the same. But even hell was hopeful if there was a manifest determination to come out the other side.” The book is also notable for its fair-mindedness about issues of race and military culture. The author makes a great deal of fuss about the fact that the 20th Maine was a highly egalitarian regiment that never lost its civilian-based mentality. Additionally, the book is fair-minded in talking about the less praiseworthy aspects of the history of the 20th Maine, including its taste for practical jokes, its lack of discipline in the raiding along the Weldon Railroad, which nearly got mutinous, and its flight from the rebels at the Wilderness, and perhaps most notably its brutal intramural fighting with a unit of black cavalry who were guarding a particularly hated sulter. This is a book that is worthy of considerable praise—it shows skill in prose, skill in structure, and a humane view towards both the 20th Maine and indeed everyone else who intersects it, regardless of whether they were friend or foe. Such a gracious humanity is well worth appreciating, and emulating.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/07/06/being-a-true-and-faithful-account-of-the-battle-of-filbert-grove/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/08/03/join-or-die/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/08/17/were-manly-men-of-maine/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/on-the-legitimacy-of-historical-reenacting/