384 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 9 illus., 5 maps, appends., notes, bibl., index
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The Grand Old Man of Maine Selected Letters of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, 1865-1914 edited by Jeremiah E. Goulka Copyright
(c) 2004 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights
reserved.
Little Round Top: They fired their last rounds. His men looked to their colonel. To fail to hold their position "at all costs" would be unthinkable—the loss of the Union left flank. "Not a moment … to be lost! Five minutes more of such a defensive, and the last roll-call would sound for us! Desperate as the chances were, there was nothing for it, but to take the offensive. I stepped to the colors. The men turned towards me. One word was enough,—'bayonet!'"[1]
A memory to last a lifetime, one to make civilians at home hold their manhood cheap. It was vivid, heroic, romantic, knightly, emotive, historically significant. Some lucky soldiers had more than one such moment. As William Tecumseh Sherman wrote, "To be at the head of a strong column of troops, in the execution of some task that requires brain, is the highest pleasure … a grim one and terrible, but which leaves on the mind and memory the strongest mark."[2] In these grim and terrible pleasures, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain redefined himself from a country professor to a soldier. The Civil War was his defining moment and the source of his legacy of glory. It forever changed the world he lived in, his sense of self, and the opportunities open to him. Indeed, his finest memories did more than that. Chamberlain made them his benchmark for his personal expectations and aspirations. For this he would suffer.
It would have been hard for him to have done otherwise: Chamberlain was revered as his state's greatest hero for the entirety of his long postwar life, a life that lasted until the eve of the First World War. He was the citizen-soldier writ large, a hero in an age that worshiped heroes. Unlike many one-event heroes, Chamberlain could list Little Round Top; his battlefield promotion at Petersburg; his leadership at the Quaker Road, White Oak Road, and Five Forks; and his selection to receive the official surrender of the infantry of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox. He had been thrust into greatness and he rose to the occasion, rapidly outgrowing his cloistered rural worldview to become a peer and friend to many of the nation's notables, a natural selection for one of the limited number of regular army colonelcies, and the obvious choice for governor of Maine. He was the "Grand Old Man of Maine," the "Hero of Little Round Top," who was elected governor with record-breaking majorities four terms in a row, who ran the college where he had studied, who saved Maine from civil war in 1880.
It was only natural that he would yearn for a continuation of his heroic life; the public encouraged, even demanded, it. Laudatory, near worshipful, newspaper reports frequently greeted him: "Sections may have their grand old men, but never were, are not and never will be, [any] grander than Maine's hero soldier, ex-governor, and greatest orator, Gen. Joshua L. Chamberlain."[3] His self-identity and self-worth responded accordingly. The degree to which Chamberlain met his Civil War service benchmarks determined his sense of continuing personal success. Predictably, the more frustrated he felt, the more he turned to history and reminiscence.
Because the Civil War so profoundly influenced postwar America, this volume of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's postwar letters is very much about the various influences of the war and its memory. As historians frequently note, historical memory (both natural and cultivated) plays a powerful role in individuals' and peoples' lives. Just as we are surprised to see classical or medieval ruins in an old painting, the past plays both a fundamental and an enigmatic-romantic role to the historical individual. To Civil War veterans, their war experiences and their memories of these experiences (in both the congruence and dissimilitude between them) were vital to their understanding of their world and of themselves. No one can skim even the most superficial study or novel of the Gilded Age without being astounded at how the Civil War loomed over later life. And not just in the South. Historical memory is the most prominent theme in Chamberlain's correspondence.
It is not the only theme, of course. The letters in this volume have been selected from hundreds of extant letters both to present a substantial look at Chamberlain's postwar life—his family relationships, his career and the decisions that shaped it, and his personal interests—and to highlight the predominant themes in his life and correspondence: the memory and commemoration of the Civil War, the military history of the Civil War, state and national politics in the second half of the nineteenth century, the politics of veterans and pensions, and the modernization of Bowdoin College and higher education. Intertwined throughout is the theme of Victorian manhood and masculinity. The letters are presented chronologically. This introduction will provide some analysis and historical context for the themes in the correspondence, but it will allow Chamberlain's letters to speak for themselves.
This collection responds to a gap in Chamberlain scholarship. Chamberlain's Civil War career and letters have received a great deal of attention since Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels, Ken Burns's documentary The Civil War, and the movie Gettysburg, but his postwar life lay only superficially inspected for decades. A mere forty-nine pages cover that many years in the definitive biography, Alice Rains Trulock's In the Hands of Providence: Joshua L. Chamberlain and the American Civil War.[4] It has only been with the publication of the late John Pullen's short Joshua Chamberlain: A Hero's Life and Legacy and the limited run of Diane Smith's delightfully detailed Fanny and Joshua: The Enigmatic Lives of Frances Caroline Adams and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain that the years after Appomattox have received significant treatment.[5] With the growth of Civil War historical memory as a field of historical inquiry and the increased interest in Chamberlain's postwar life—often taking the form of hagiography or overenthusiastic responses to that hagiography—a volume of his postwar letters takes on especial interest.
Chamberlain and Victorian Manhood
It is a commonplace that notions of manhood, masculinity, male roles, and male values have shaped American men and society,[6] but it is impossible to understand Chamberlain without understanding his notions of manhood. His masculine values exerted great sway on both his public and private lives.
Like most boys who grew up in a religious New England family,[7] Chamberlain was trained to aspire to a certain type of manhood. This was a principled, sentimental, chivalric manhood with a focus on service, honor, and knightly action.[8] Stories of Old Testament generals like his namesake Joshua and John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress were drummed into children's ears; adults read Byron and Sir Walter Scott.
Chamberlain's aspirational notions of masculine values developed through the course of his life. There is the vigorous manhood illustrated in the oft-told vignette about his father's instructions for overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles: "Do it! That's how." While a student at Bowdoin, Chamberlain developed a focus on "duty" that would guide his career choices.[9] He was, for example, an avid student of about fourteen languages, including Greek, Latin, German, Old Norse, and Provençal, with their classical and medieval literature of heroic myth and epic. And then there was the war.
Chamberlain's correspondence shows that he actively embraced Victorian definitions of masculinity. In his view, "Manhood is one of the noblest of God's gifts or manifestations."[10] When planning the centennial celebration of Senator Hannibal Hamlin's birth, he instructed that "some reference to his robust manhood should be made."[11] When Chamberlain wished to impress upon the outgoing governor of Maine that he would not allow armed men in the statehouse during the "count-out" crisis of January 1880, he told him that "My honor is pledged in this."[12]
As a man of God, a scholar, and a soldier, Chamberlain consciously cultivated the Victorian notions of manhood that he had always been taught to embrace. He saw himself as a Christian knight in dutiful errantry. As the eminent historian of chivalry, Johan Huizinga, wrote, "The conception of chivalry as a sublime form of secular life might be defined as an aesthetic ideal assuming the appearance of an ethical ideal."[13] This chivalric, dutiful Victorian masculine morality that Chamberlain was trained to believe and that he cultivated in himself was of such pervasive importance to him and the course of his life that one cannot hope to understand him or his letters without recognizing its influence.
Chamberlain and Civil War History and Memory
Without that recognition it is also impossible to understand the role of the Civil War in Chamberlain's life after Appomattox. Civil War veterans felt that they had participated in an extraordinary historical event that would shape their world for decades to come, one that connected them with their revolutionary forebears. They had made history and were revered as heroes.
Indeed, it is notable how frequently veterans used the word "History" (often capitalized) throughout—and especially toward the end of—the American Civil War. They were conscious of making history, of taking part in an event that was destined for legend. For supporters of the Union, it dawned a bright new era. The most prominent historian of the day, George Bancroft, declared that the Civil War settled all the major issues of the day by destroying slavery, preserving the Union and republican government, and vindicating the principles of constitutional government.[14] Henry Adams predicted that the war would infuse Americans with new, cleaner habits: they would quit drinking, especially at bars and taverns, and start brushing their teeth, washing their hands, wearing clean clothes, and taking on new, responsible life challenges, believing "that they have a duty in life besides that of getting ahead, and a responsibility for other people's acts as well as their own."[15] As soldiers declared that the war was now "a matter of history," they knew they would be the ones to write that history.[16]
And write that history they did.[17] There was a burst of interest in Civil War history during the conflict's immediate aftermath, partly due to the excitement of victory and defeat, and partly to avoid the tough questions that followed—Reconstruction, unemployment, inflation, revelations of wartime corruption—by focusing on the clear morality play of battle. As veterans struggled to adapt to their old home lives and to find work, many immediately turned to history.
This burst of interest passed as veterans and the country moved on, but as veterans entered middle and old age, as disappointments with the ambivalent fruits of war, their own lives, and their children's lives developed, they turned to reminiscence. During the 1880s and 1890s, Civil War reminiscence became a pastime, with lectures and reunions of old soldiers filling calendars, and memoirs and histories pouring off presses like so much water.
In such climates, Chamberlain was a natural star. He was the romantic hero of both Little Round Top and the official surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was the professor-turned-officer honored by the likes of Ulysses S. Grant and Charles Griffin. He was a spellbinding orator, this former professor of rhetoric and oratory; indeed, he was orator of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) and the Society of the Army of the Potomac. Notably, rhetoric encompassed the field of history at the time. His career as a scholar gave him the patina of objectivity, and his scholarly interest in history fueled his research. Among Civil War historians and memorialists, Chamberlain held a special position.
During the first surge of interest in Civil War history, Chamberlain was adrift in Brunswick. At war's end, he had written to his sister Sarah that he was not "disturbed" about the "exceedingly uncertain state" of his future, for he had "plenty of 'strings to my bow', or in better words, Providence will both open & guide my way."[18] One option was to return to Bowdoin, though he professed to maintain the same fear of returning to the ivory tower that he had expressed at the beginning of the war:[19] while home on medical leave during the last winter of the war, he had informed his father that when the war ended, he intended to resign his professorship and "throw myself on the current of affairs, and either remain in the military service (as is most congenial to my temperament) or strike into some other enterprise of a more bold and stirring character than a College chair affords."[20] The offer of a military post—though a great honor—turned out to be less than bold and stirring: either western garrison or southern Reconstruction duty. Hoping for something better to come along, Chamberlain had turned down the prestigious collectorship of the Port of Bangor. But nothing else presented itself, so, in need of respite, he returned to teaching. He was terribly bored. To ease the transition, he lectured and began collecting records to write a history of the V Corps of the Army of the Potomac, but a call from the Republican Party would put the project on hold indefinitely.
For Chamberlain, the second surge of his interest in the history of the war began in earnest after his tenure as governor of Maine and president of Bowdoin College had ended with mixed feelings and after his hopes for a Senate seat or high office in the Hayes administration had been quashed. Frustrated by civilian life's failure to offer many moments of heroic duty (or to reward him when it did), he turned back toward the time when life was more generous to him. He was a prolific writer, orator, and organizer. He wrote articles and chapters on Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Petersburg, the Quaker and White Oak Roads, Five Forks, Appomattox, Lincoln, and the Grand Review of the Army of the Potomac.[21] Invitations arrived from periodicals ranging from Hearst's popular magazines to the prestigious North American Review; Houghton Mifflin offered to publish anything Chamberlain wrote.[22] He wrote a history of the final days of the war, The Passing of the Armies: An Account of the Final Campaign of the Army of the Potomac Based Upon Personal Reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps, which was published posthumously. He delivered countless lectures and Decoration Day (Memorial Day) addresses to countless groups on Civil War subjects.[23] His research work, editing work, and organizational work increasingly dominates his later correspondence.
Thinking about the war not only gave Chamberlain an opportunity to bask in his past glories and satisfy his scholarly proclivities, but it kept him connected with the "boys." He was extremely active in numerous veterans' societies and committees. He served terms as president of the 20th Maine Society, the Association of Maine Soldiers and Sailors, and the Society of the Army of the Potomac, and as commander of the Maine divisions of MOLLUS and the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR). He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Maine Gettysburg Commission, which prepared a volume to commemorate the state's role at Gettysburg, published in 1898.[24] In 1913 he chaired the commission, which organized the state's participation in the celebration of the battle's fiftieth anniversary. He also chaired the Maine committee to fund a memorial to honor Union women in Washington, D.C.
These groups were fraternal, delightfully social, and served myriad other purposes. Chamberlain legitimately saw at least some of them as historical societies, such as the commission that produced Maine at Gettysburg. The goal of a historical society was not just to record, however, but to remember and to teach. Here enters the romance of Civil War historical memory and the torturous path to sectional reconciliation. Nominating Rutherford B. Hayes to be commander-in-chief of MOLLUS, he stated that
Chamberlain, Veterans Politics, and Pensions
The continuing influence of the Civil War upon national life is evident in his statement nominating Hayes. The war not only influenced (or outright created) many of the questions of the day, but it partially determined how the questions were addressed and who would address them. Some Republican regulars waved the proverbial "bloody shirt"; political prominence, even mere candidacy, often depended on one's Civil War record. On visiting Washington, Chamberlain wrote to his sister that "Self-seeking marks too many faces, & all the strifes of peaceful times—less noble often than those of war,—are seen here in their little play."[26] To Ellis Spear, he wrote that there "is a tendency now-a-days to make 'history' subserve other purposes than legitimate ones. 'Incidental' history, even if true in detail can be made to produce what used to be called in our logic 'suggestio falsi.'"[27]
The belated awarding of Medals of Honor provides a good example. Originally intended to honor "such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities, during the present insurrection," the medal was extended to officers in 1863. When an 1890 rule allowed the belated award of the medals—with a mere recital of facts and a report from a commanding officer or witness required for substantiation—they were doled out promiscuously: 1,400 in eight years.[28] Chamberlain campaigned against such largesse: "The curious transformation of the rear rank to the front now that it is profoundly peaceful and safe [in Washington], is quite noticeable all along the line, and makes a fellow of my temperament reluctant to put in any claim for recognition of any kind."[29] Naturally, he still wanted his due, rightly believing himself deserving of recognition and afraid of being conspicuously left out, but he wanted the medal to be "held sacred—not to be bought or sold, or recklessly conferred."[30] He may have influenced the striking of 911 awards from the Medal of Honor roll (including several hundred given to members of the 27th Maine merely for reenlisting) and the 1918 legislation that significantly raised the standard for awarding future medals.[31]
Accordingly, political veterans guarded their reputations assiduously. Chamberlain was no different. When William Oates, his adversary at Little Round Top, proposed to build a monument to his 15th Alabama in a location that would have implicitly suggested that the Alabamians had pierced the 20th Maine's lines, Chamberlain engaged in a heated battle to ensure that the monument would be located accurately.[32] He also carefully staved off a rebellion from within the 20th Maine's ranks over who actually led the charge.[33]
Postwar allies also supported each other's records. Chamberlain revoked permission to publish his favorable review of Franklin Haskell's book on Gettysburg when he "noticed the strictures on the conduct of [Alexander] Webb's brigade in that battle. General Webb is my very special friend."[34] This could reach even to the absurd: Chamberlain somehow managed to praise Ambrose Burnside as a "most deserving commander."[35]
The accuracy of his historical works thus begs the usual questions about narratives from memory, especially battlefield memories. Chamberlain thought deeply about the war, both critically and romantically. To the modern reader, his analyses are both fascinating and perhaps a touch too close to the action to be impartial. Battlefield haze and political purposes may have sometimes challenged a perfect impartiality. But, then again, impartiality regarding the war was almost heresy, and Chamberlain would have no part of that. He did recognize the difficulties inherent in his work, though: "I am perfectly aware that in my account, which only claimed to present things as they appeared to me,—which is perhaps a narrow point of view, although in some ways useful,—there must be errors even in statements of 'past' concerning 'the other side.'… What I wish is to get the truth as far as possible—the 'whole truth' I fear is out of reach."[36]
Political veterans used veterans' groups to promote their careers and parties. One minor method was "patriotic education," to encourage teaching in a way that would glorify them and deprive alleged Copperheads of glory. Chamberlain edited The American Sentinel: A Patriotic Illustrated Monthly, which began running in 1898.[37]
The real utility of veterans' organizations to the Republican Party was to procure pensions. As veterans aged, those in politics quickly realized that the fastest way to their fellow veterans' votes was to secure them pension and patronage benefits from the government. Aging veterans, some of whom still suffered lingering effects of the war, naturally welcomed such benefits—even more so as the depression of the 1890s set in. Republicans resuscitated the long moribund Grand Army of the Republic to lobby Congress for veterans' benefits. Northern veterans (or at least their organizations) believed that they were entitled to honor and worship—and pensions. Congress acted accordingly, creating America's first entitlement program by passing legislation such as the Arrears Act of 1879 and the Dependent Pension Act of 1890, providing over $1 billion in pension benefits to veterans.[38]
During the two decades surrounding the turn of the century, numerous acts were proposed to reactivate volunteer generals and sometimes colonels in order to immediately retire them with generous regular Army pensions. These plans offered political veterans and their friends an opportunity to line their own pockets and secure additional honors (though, to be sure, veterans such as Chamberlain were deserving and needful). The delineation of beneficiaries among these ranks varied from bill to bill, but they naturally tended toward inclusiveness.
As health problems brought on by his war wounds made it increasingly difficult to earn a living, Chamberlain wanted a share of any benefits. He felt deserving and needful; his wounds were the scourge of his life and the cause of his death. Perhaps to protect his sense of dignity, he wanted his pension to be an honor, not a mere payout under some entitlement or political patronage program. Just as he had disdained the many hundreds of brevets doled out during the final months of the war and the hundreds of medals of honor handed out in the 1890s, Chamberlain refused to support or be included in a "promiscuously" wide, money-grabbing bill. His sense of dignity forbade retirement acts to include anyone who had not commanded a division "in the field in actual operations of war" (though he only barely met this requirement himself).[39]
Although he often demonstrated a realistic understanding about any given bill's prospects in Congress, Chamberlain frequently refused to show support when politically appropriate. His outright opposition to the largesse of most bills proposed by veterans' groups like the GAR debilitated him when his private pension bills were eventually introduced: the groups (even those of which he was a charter member and senior officer) repaid his opposition by ignoring his bills, consigning them to oblivion in committee.[40] Chamberlain's arrogance in not supporting a bill whose breadth would reach beyond those of only the very highest degree of accomplishment cost him dearly.
Chamberlain and Leadership
In the Civil War, Chamberlain found success in a certain style of leadership. After the war, he sought to parlay that success into civilian forms of dutiful leadership. Soon after he returned to Maine in 1865, he was thrust into the interim presidency of Bowdoin and then into the race for governor. He never turned back. His impressive list of leadership roles—governor, college president, railroad executive—belies his creeping sense of disappointment with civilian leadership roles.
Chamberlain's difficulties as a civilian leader stem at least in part from his particular type of military leadership experience. As a regiment, brigade, and, briefly, division commander, his role was to use his tactical thinking to achieve assigned objectives that were results of a more senior officer's strategic thinking. Battlefield tactics are not about compromise or spin.
Chamberlain recognized this. As he told his sister, "I am staggered by seeing both sides of a question. I never could be a partisan leader—a man of one idea. I see the whole combination, & am perplexed till the time comes for me to strike in—I can go in then & see 'clear as a quill.'"[41] Chamberlain believed that this circumspect approach had a strong moral foundation. Well as this may be, his attitude and style were not the stuff of which effective political leaders are made.
Chamberlain may have believed that executive politics would offer him an opportunity for administrative leadership akin to his military role. He won the governor's seat by a landslide in the September 1866 elections and went on to win two more (one-year) terms, once in the largest victory in Maine history, and then an unprecedented fourth term. Republicans and Democrats both encouraged him to seek a fifth term under their banners. His politics were marked by a desire to modernize Maine's economy and a diligent effort to responsibly enforce the law, an effort that often beleaguered him.
Once the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, the most controversial political issues of the day were temperance and capital punishment, issues whose partisans were not to be placated by someone of a moderate, nonpartisan, balanced, and intellectual temperament. In the 1850s, Maine had become the first state to enact prohibition. Dissatisfied with the mere requirement that local police officers enforce the "Maine law," the powerful temperance minority wanted a new constabulary dedicated to the suppression of illegal liquor and its trade. The constabulary, a forerunner of modern state police forces, was seen as draconian by a large part of the population, but Chamberlain took an ineffective noncommittal stance on it. Outraged by Chamberlain's proposed candidacy for an unprecedented fourth term and his refusal to support the constabulary, radicals in the temperance wing bolted the Republican party and ran their own candidate in 1869. Chamberlain's sheer popularity easily overwhelmed both the temperance and the Democratic candidates, but Chamberlain's handling of the constabulary issue tarnished his effectiveness in other matters.[42]
Maine had waffled on capital punishment for years. Statute law required a year to elapse after sentencing before the governor could set an execution date if he did not pardon or commute the sentence first. Past governors had asked the legislature to clarify the law with an eye to abolishing the death penalty, but the legislature always chose the safer path of silence. Governors responded in the same vein, delaying sentences indefinitely. Aside from one execution ordered by Chamberlain's predecessor Samuel Cony for a particularly heinous crime, there had been no executions in Maine since 1837.[43]
The capital sentencing of Clifton Harris, a freedman who had emigrated to Maine, where he brutally raped and murdered two elderly women, brought the issue to a head. Harris had turned state's evidence and implicated a white man, Luther Verrill, as a coperpetrator, but then he recanted and claimed to have acted alone. A statewide uproar followed when Verrill was acquitted; Harris was an ignorant freedman pitied by many. Chamberlain threatened to actually order execution if the legislature did not clarify the law, which it, of course, preferred not to do. So Chamberlain ordered the execution. It was bungled, Harris died a slow death by strangulation, and Chamberlain was excoriated by all sides.[44] Though Chamberlain was always a popular figure, voters often deemed him ineffective as a political leader.
Even so, Chamberlain's administration was not without accomplishment, such as some useful development of Maine's resources and the development of an agricultural academy that was the precursor to the University of Maine at Orono. Both political parties wanted him to run for a fifth term. The public continued to adore him and encouraged him to seek a fifth term or run for the U.S. Senate. After refusing to appoint himself to finish William P. Fessenden's Senate term—and so place himself in a strong position to run for reelection as a popular incumbent—he launched a halfhearted senatorial campaign against his appointee, the powerful Lot M. Morrill, in 1870, pending the seating of the state legislature and the end of Fessenden's term in 1871. However, his failure to cultivate, or even ally with, the state party leadership consistently blocked any hopes he might have had of a seat in the Senate.
Chamberlain moved into a different form of leadership at Bowdoin, which will be discussed below. But Lot Morrill's resignation from the Senate in 1876 to become secretary of the treasury during the last year of Grant's administration drew Chamberlain back into the maelstrom of his senatorial ambitions. He pushed for the governor's appointment to fill out Morrill's term, but party boss Rep. James G. Blaine got the nod.
His disdain for the party's leadership caused him to exult in Rutherford B. Hayes's decision to link himself with the independent wing of the Republican Party and bring men like Carl Schurz into power. As he wrote Hayes, "the prestige of personal despotism in politics is broken, and … the true relations of the several branches of the government are in a fair way to be restored. Honest men will take courage, & will stand together, and stand by you, in this reconciliation & regeneration of the Country."[45] Civil service reform looked like a real possibility, and southern home rule (which northern intellectuals supported, hungering for sectional reconciliation and an end to the corruption endemic in Radical Reconstruction) was promised. Chamberlain believed that in spite of Hayes's unpopularity with the Maine Republican leadership, the national party was purified and would offer him high office. Again he found disappointment, though he did enjoy a trip to Europe as a commissioner on education.
Chamberlain's correspondence suggests that he brought on his frustration and disappointment by deeply desiring high office while steadfastly refusing to play partisan politics or openly ask for a role and risk rejection. One particular political event did offer him a rare reprieve from civilian drudgery, a rare moment to shine again. In January 1880, Maine faced an election crisis that threatened to touch off civil war. Though the complicated and dramatic politics of the 1879 election "count-out" crisis demands more space than can be given here, a brief description follows.[46] Maine's constitution required gubernatorial candidates to win by a majority at the polls; a mere plurality would be resolved in the new legislature. In 1878, incumbent Republican Selden Connor won 44 percent to Democrat Alonzo Garcelon's 22 percent and Greenbacker John Smith's 34 percent. Thrown into the legislature, the Democrats and Greenbackers combined as "fusionists" to elect Garcelon.
The following year the scene was similar. In the September 1879 election, Republican Daniel Davis won 49 percent to the unwelcome incumbent's 15 percent and the Greenbackers' 34 percent, but the Republicans won a large enough majority in the legislature to ensure Davis's victory there. To block the Republican majority from electing Davis, Governor Garcelon's executive council took action. Responding to accusations of vote tampering, it set out on a campaign of its own administrative tampering, using technicalities to strategically void ("count-out") whole towns' election rolls in order to elect a fusionist legislature.
With armed bands and popular outrage centering on Augusta, Governor Garcelon called Chamberlain in to protect the state's institutions as commanding general of the state militia. Chamberlain faced what he called "another Round Top," and he reveled in it.[47] Death threats mounted; both parties excoriated him in the press; both parties tried to bribe him with the offer of Hannibal Hamlin's soon-to-be-open Senate seat. Chamberlain staved off disorder until the Maine Supreme Judicial Court could identify the legitimately elected legislators and government could continue.
The public proclaimed Chamberlain savior of the state's constitutional government and encouraged him to run for the Senate. Again his ambition surged, but it was yet another halfhearted campaign in which he refused to really extend himself and risk rejection, hoping that the office would seek the man. Even so, it may have been futile because this time the party sought to bury him for his treacherous refusal to support them during the crisis (even though his impartial handling of the crisis had allowed them to take power legitimately). Crestfallen, Chamberlain looked to the new and exciting world of business. It was a risky chance for wealth, fame, and service.
Following his eventual resignation from Bowdoin, business would have been a natural option, considering that politics was no longer a possibility (though he did seek an ambassadorship during Arthur's presidency), and offers of college presidencies or professorships no longer appealed to him. The power of Chamberlain's name made him a commodity for letterheads and fund-raising. Over the next several years, he became the president or senior officer of numerous New York companies, mostly railroads and technological development concerns such as the Kinetic Power Company, which made improved urban transit engines, and of Florida development companies, thinking that the climate would improve his health. He was president of the Homosassa Company, the Kinetic Power Company, the Mutual Town & Bond Company, the Ocala and Silver Springs Company, and the Lillian Mining Company; he was vice president of the Florida West Coast Improvement Company and the Silver Springs, Ocala and Gulf Railroad; and his list of titles ran on. His involvement in each company varied. Because he was active in so many ventures, several of which were interconnected, it is difficult to gauge his exact activity in each. For some he only raised seed investment, whereas he actually operated some of his Florida ventures.[48]
Lecturing, veterans' meetings and reunions, and his health prevented Chamberlain from giving his full attention to even one company for any length of time. His Florida ventures may have received more of his attention when he was there due to the state's isolation. Though business leadership might have more closely paralleled his military leadership than anything he had yet tried, it does not appear that he ever fully engaged or understood business. The travel, though a hardship, seems to have pleased him, and New York excited him. Spending time in Florida both fulfilled his old missionary instincts and was good for his health—until a bout of malaria prostrated him. His need to feel a sense of duty or service was powerful, and this did something to satiate it.
Chamberlain's frustration as a civilian leader led him to jump at opportunities when war broke out. The first time this happened he was governor of Maine—he offered his services in the Franco-Prussian War![49] More in line with his character was his offer of services for the Spanish-American War: "I cannot but think that my day is not yet over for the service of my Country. You gentlemen in Congress and in the offices of the Government, are in your right places: I desire to be in mine."[50]
As his health and wealth faded toward the end of the century, Chamberlain sought a patronage position. Again politics played its role, and his refusal to engage in a partisan game prevented him from receiving what he—and many others—considered his due. The most important administration post in the state, and therefore the top patronage position, was the collector of customs for the Port of Portland. Party leaders were fully cognizant of Chamberlain's fame, so to keep the office from him wholesale would have been dangerous, but they did not want to give him the top spot.[51] Instead they gave him the number two role, the surveyorship.[52]
With hundreds of Maine's most prominent citizens supporting him for the collectorship, Chamberlain viewed being offered the lesser role as a significant insult.
Chamberlain and Education
In 1862, Chamberlain announced that he would never again return to academia. "Let me say no danger and no hardship ever makes me wish to get back to that college life again. I can't breathe when I think of those last two years. Why I would spend my whole life in campaigning it, rather than endure that again."[54] Even though teaching was merely a fallback in 1865, and even though he often pronounced himself profoundly bored and frustrated by it, education would always remain a fundamental part and passion of Chamberlain's life, and he had the great good fortune to be involved in the dramatic years of educational reform of the second half of the nineteenth century.
Chamberlain held myriad academic posts. He was an educator in the regular sense as a professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, and chair of Modern Languages before the war, chair of Rhetoric and Oratory until becoming governor, and Edward Little Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy and professor of Political Science and Public Law afterward. During his time at Bowdoin, he somehow managed to teach nearly every course there as well as to devise a few new offerings of his own. As an administrator, he served as interim president of Bowdoin in 1865 until he became governor and as president of Bowdoin from 1871 to 1883; he remained a trustee until his death. He also presided over the Stimson Institute for Artist-Artisans in the early 1890s. In addition, he was a member of numerous scholarly organizations in fields ranging from religion and philosophy to political science and Egyptology.
His was not a prolific career in terms of scholarly publication, but, then again, his was an unusual career. He did have several published articles and addresses to his credit on a multiplicity of topics including philosophy ("The Two Souls"), political theory ("American Ideals"; "Society and Societies"; "Sovereignty and Sacrifice in Political Society"; "Ruling Powers in History"), law ("The Law and Right of Property"), Maine history ("Maine, Her Place in History"; "DeMonts and Acadia"; "Maine," in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed.), and education (his inaugural address, "The New Education"; the introduction to Universities and Their Sons, a series that he also edited; his 1879 report to the State Department on education in Europe). He also presided over New England Magazine and The American Sentinel: A Patriotic Illustrated Monthly.[55] His career was prolific when it came to Civil War history, and his appeal as an orator and writer must have been at least partially due to the fact that he was a scholar.
Though modern liberal arts education has its roots in the German-inspired seminar system developed at universities such as Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago after Chamberlain's retirement from academe, these roots could only take hold following a series of foundational steps. The most important of these was the secularization of the academy. From this, many other changes might follow.
As the influence of the clergy waned in postwar America, so too did it wane at Bowdoin. When Chamberlain was first hired in the 1850s, Bowdoin was a rigorously Congregationalist college. By the early 1870s, it had eased its sectarian connections to the extent that Chamberlain wished to make clear the "fact [that] there is no College—which is a Christian College at all—that is so little sectarian as Bowdoin."[56] Sectarian strife certainly existed, but this was the strife of changing times.[57]
Part and parcel with secularization was a broadening in the purposes of a college education. Before the war, colleges and universities prepared students for careers in the ministry, the law, the military, medicine, politics, or academia. After the war, the proportion of students drawn to the pulpit and other traditional disciplines plummeted as occupations such as business and engineering became highly regarded career options. Faced with financial troubles and this shift in career focus, Bowdoin was desperate for new leadership.
This presented Chamberlain with a fantastic opportunity. Prior to the Civil War, he had been hounded as a radical for his pedagogical theories;[58] now he was positively encouraged to be a strident reformer. This was an extraordinary chance to develop his theories. In an 1859 letter to Professor Nehemiah Cleaveland, he explained and defended his educational philosophy.[59] Chamberlain argued that a "College course" should offer a "liberal education—not a special or professional one." It should not purport to give a "finished education," but should give a "general outline … involving such acquaintance with all the departments of knowledge and culture … as shall give some insight into the … powers by which thought passes into life." In being introduced to "each of the great fields of study," a student may "experience himself a little in all." Within this framework, the role of Chamberlain's Department of Rhetoric and Oratory would be to nurture analytic thinking and self-expression to help give "growth and grace and vigor to the mind." For "what every man most cherishes and most sensitively regards … is the expression of himself—the outward manifestation of the thoughts and feelings which are most real, most characteristic, most sacred to him." The goal should be, he thought, to "let a man come out … till we see what manner of plant he is: then, when he can bear it without bleeding to death, nip, prune, check by degrees till you begin to see the glorious form growing out before you into the shape and symmetry God meant for it."
To accomplish this, professors needed to change the way they interacted with students. He did not find the usual routine—"themes written, faithfully corrected, returned, and burned"—effective, so he devised a system "for the sake of 'getting at' the student's mind (and heart too, for he has one) and … securing the practical use and application of the suggestions." Juniors would spend a fortnight every term with him, individually, editing their themes into real papers. Then students would make their traditional oral presentations, "thus returning to the old practice of 'original declamations,' which is a valuable exercise." (It certainly had been for him.)
Chamberlain had tried to employ this pedagogy in his own courses. One of these was a popular senior elective on the history of English language and literature. His syllabus began with a detailed study of the historical origins of the language and then proceeded to cover the great authors, poets, and orators of the language, medieval and modern. When students ran into confusion over such things as "manners and customs now obsolete," they performed independent research and presented historical papers to the class. He worked with each student closely to "get at" his mind.
Now Chamberlain could employ his theory freely and openly. For instance, he outlined a new approach to teaching political philosophy. His plan was to "begin, after the general college course has given the student some knowledge of ancient & medieval history, & take up the history of the development of Society, Government & Constitutional liberty then Political Ethics, or the abstract principles involved in political society, & finally Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, Political Economy, & Social Science."[60] He spurred the interest in political science at the college and introduced new electives.
As ever, the Civil War had its influence. The growth of industry during and after the Civil War and its importance in winning the war gave new prestige to business, science, and engineering. Agricultural academies such as the one Chamberlain helped develop as governor appeared on the landscape. He opened new departments, introducing new courses in science and engineering. He created a two-year Masters program in Letters, Science, and Philosophy. He set up a coeducational summer school course in science; in his inaugural address, he had even hinted at generally admitting women.[61] In the process, he doubled the size of the faculty. Chamberlain's correspondence shows that, like the presidents of other prominent universities, he devoted an increasing proportion of his time to fund-raising to open and maintain the expensive new departments.[62] He created Bowdoin's first endowment and built Memorial Hall.
As part of the broadening of collegiate education, Chamberlain relaxed social discipline. He stripped the faculty of much of their social policing roles and chose to treat his students "like gentlemen," holding "a man's word of honor as better than foreign testimony."[63] He eased the social code, which he believed to be overly strict, including its policy of making "good behavior" a prerequisite for candidacy for honors.[64]
Another vestige of the Civil War was a lingering belief that the North had been unprepared for conflict and that this had led to slaughter through incompetence. This militated toward advanced preparation for future conflict, so students were to be trained in engineering and science. And Chamberlain thought that all young men should have at least a rudimentary knowledge of military science, so he instituted a program to teach military science and tactics.[65]
The reaction to the "drill," as it was known, was somewhat predictable. At first, the boys enjoyed playing soldier, but when it became a routine they found it an annoying waste of time and money. They resented having their college turned into a military academy. Complaints mounted until the junior class finally refused to participate; the two lower classes joined in the rebellion.
It was an ugly moment at Bowdoin. Chamberlain felt personally snubbed. What may have saddened him most was a discovery that his students did not share his martial definition of manhood. Perhaps he thought his effort to develop students' independence and self-expression had backfired on him. In strict military style, he expelled all the rebels—a full three-quarters of the student body—and threw the college into a terrible crisis.[66] In the end, all but three of the rebels were readmitted upon swearing an oath to the college. The drill lived on as an elective until its demise from lack of enrollment a couple of years later. Ironically, it was ahead of its time. In the 1890s, drills founded under GAR's auspices became popular nationwide and were the progenitors of modern ROTC programs.[67]
The drill rebellion was the end of Chamberlain's honeymoon as president. His authority had been questioned, and the depression of 1873 slowed the flow of donations, threatening the existence of the new departments. Science and engineering students feared that Bowdoin would close the new programs, so they began to preemptively transfer to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and similar schools, as did some faculty. Chamberlain had to watch his cherished engineering and science departments wither and die. Though he had been given a mandate for change, there had been too much change too fast, and as funding slowed, the boards of trustees and overseers and the faculty turned reactionary. Sectarian politics returned to haunt him. In addition, since most of Maine's most prominent men were Bowdoin alumni, the cloister did not protect Chamberlain from his foes in state politics.[68] His two prior attempts to step down had been rebuffed, but the enmity he had engendered and his poor health led the college boards to accept Chamberlain's resignation from the presidency in 1883. As he warned Bowdoin professor Henry Johnson, "however pleasant and useful the life of a College Professor may be, that of a President, in I may say any of our common or best New England colleges even, is about the most thankless wearing and wasteful life that can be undertaken."[69]
Throughout his life, Chamberlain's relationship with Bowdoin was one of intense caring. Chamberlain was almost everything an alumnus could be: holder of bachelor's, master's, and honorary doctorate degrees; instructor, professor of nearly every subject, chair of departments and holder of endowed chairs; overseer; trustee; president of the alumni society; and president. The students worshiped him, and he loved them back. Stories abound of them meeting him at the depot, of swarming him at his gate, of constantly paying calls on Fannie and him, of joining them for holidays.[70] He loved and cherished the college, yet academic politics were always distasteful to him, and the failure of his reforms to hold during his tenure saddened him—but he could still joyously celebrate his successor William DeWitt Hyde's success in seeing through the lasting birth of the modern Bowdoin during Hyde's long years of patient guidance.
In addition to his continuing activities at Bowdoin and his continuing historical writing and lecturing, Chamberlain made one last stab at educational administration in the 1890s. As Chamberlain's frolics with business speculation in New York and Florida faded with their hopes of riches, he was well placed for a new adventure. Around this time, several robber barons-turned-philanthropists were founding vocational schools for ambitious urban working-class youth. A variation on this theme was Jonathan Stimson's Institute of Industrial Arts. Stimson's avant-garde art school sought to introduce new techniques for art education, such as favoring live models to the traditional plaster casts. The New York Times called it "the most vital American Art School and by all odds the best in this country."[71] Chamberlain began a fund-raising campaign, and he tried to open a summer school extension at Domhegan, his seaside summer home near Brunswick at Simpson Point.[72] Unfortunately his poor health kept him bedridden and the depression of 1893 dried up funds. He returned to Maine and turned again to the Civil War.
Editorial Method
The letters selected for this volume are presented chronologically. Undated letters are included in the Appendix. Each letter is presented by its recipient's name:
Footnote annotations provide contextual information about the individuals and events mentioned in Chamberlain's text. Individuals mentioned three or more times have short biographies in the Dramatis Personae section rather than in the footnotes. Most household staff are not given biographies, but they are included in the First Name, Nickname, and Household Staff Register.
The letters are presented in their entirety, lightly edited only when absolutely necessary. Editorial additions of missing words or parts of words are presented in brackets. Misspellings have been corrected with brackets. Punctuation has largely been regularized, with a number of stray periods and commas deleted. Chamberlain made frequent use of underscores where modern text would use em dashes; the modern form has been chosen for ease of reading. Where Chamberlain made corrections to his text, his corrections have been adopted except where his substantive word choice offers insights into his thoughts. Clearly gratuitous letters or repeated words have been deleted. Words crossed out in manuscripts are
Chamberlain's extant letters are often copies or first drafts. Drafts are obvious from the number of errors. Chamberlain sometimes used a typewriter. His clarity in keyboarding can be indicative of his health, although this is somewhat muddied by our knowledge that his typewriter at the Custom House was of much higher quality than his personal one.[1] The frequency of typographical errors is indicative of typed letters.
Holding libraries for the letters are identified in brackets at the end of each letter. Abbreviations for the libraries and frequently cited books can be found in the next section. The sesquicentennial General Catalogue of Bowdoin College[2] is so frequently used that citation of it is simply implied in annotations of Bowdoin graduates, faculty, and officers.
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