Chamberlain/Gordon salute fiction?

JerryD

2nd Lieutenant
Joined
Aug 23, 2021
A Ranger at Appomattox expressed some skepticism that Gordon's rearing of his horse and saluting Chamberlain ever occurred. He said no other participants ever mentioned it, and that Chamberlain was a prolific creator of his own myth after the war so anything in which he is the sole source is suspect. He also indicated that Gordon is on record actually denying it, before he realized the story was too good to be hindered by facts and decided to adopt it.

I have looked and looked for any evidence that Gordon denied returning the salute in such dramatic fashion, but have found nothing. Anyone here have any source for this?
 
I am in the process of moving and have my books packed away , but I remember Chamberlain never mentioned the salute until some years after the event . There is a thread about this on CWT . I am also skeptical of it happening because , as I recall , no one else ever mentioned it despite all of the men present . I have never heard that Gordon actually denied it .
 
But General Gordon also wrote a description of the incident that affirms General Chamberlain's account.
The ranger acknowledged this, but basically said Gordon did so for political reasons, and also that the story made him look good and heroric. So after initially denying the story, he decided to adopt it. There is an old Irish saying, that you never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
 
The ranger acknowledged this, but basically said Gordon did so for political reasons, and also that the story made him look good and heroric. So after initially denying the story, he decided to adopt it. There is an old Irish saying, that you never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Perhaps. But both Generals Gordon and Chamberlain were actually on the scene--and are primary sources--but the Ranger wasn't. Irish sayings aside, the participants surely deserve equal credibility with the ranger.
 
Perhaps. But both Generals Gordon and Chamberlain were actually on the scene--and are primary sources--but the Ranger wasn't. Irish sayings aside, the participants surely deserve equal credibility with the ranger.
I never said I believed the ranger...I was trying to verify part of his story that Gordon had denied the salute from the rearing horse. As for the credibility of Gordon and Chamberlain, that is really fodder for another topic.
 
I think you could make a good argument that Chamberlain was aware that honoring the enemy was not something he would be praised for by a lot of the Northern people. And did Gordon want to go around telling the great story of how he had bowed his horse and saluted a Yankee when he surrendered Lee's army? Feelings were pretty raw just then, and would be for some years to come. Especially after Lincoln's assassination, this story would not have been well received at all IMO.
Later, when reconciliation was no longer a dirty word, telling this could be done without harming anyone's reputation. Just saying - it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that this was not played up when it happened.
 
I just did a quick scan of the newspapers from April 12 (the day of the ceremony) to April 14. After that, of course, all the news is about Lincoln's death. I can find no mention what ever of a parole ceremony or the stacking of arms by Lee's soldiers. We might feel this was an important historic moment, but the newspaper editors of the day seem to have moved on to the occupation of Richmond, the surrender of other towns and cities, and the movements of Sherman and Johnston. It is not just that Chamberlain and Gordon's salute isn't mentioned, the whole event is ignored. Much bigger things were happening.
 
I never said I believed the ranger...I was trying to verify part of his story that Gordon had denied the salute from the rearing horse. As for the credibility of Gordon and Chamberlain, that is really fodder for another topic.
But I never said that you did. What I said was that the two generals should have equal credulity.
 
This thread is now growing old but I read something last night that brought it up again in my mind. I read Silent Maine Reminders by Alden Weigelt; Mr. Weigelt is a local man (so local that he and I brought our pets to the same veterinarian). He grew up in a neighboring town in the house in which his great-grandfather, John Cleves Bradbury, lived out his final years. Mr. Weigelt wrote that his Aunt Marion also lived in that house and knew her grandfather well; she was almost certainly the source of what was written.

At the time of Appomatox, John Bradbury was a soldier in the 20th Maine who actually witnessed the event and described it pretty much as has been reported. It might be informative to scan the memoirs of the ordinary soldiers who were there to see what they, also, had to say.
 
To me, the most salient point is that I have not found anything to verify the ranger's assertion that Gordon initially denied the event. I suspect the ranger had an anti-Chamberlain bias so liked to tell stories in which Chamberlain comes across as a liar or at least as promoting his own myth. I definitely got the impression when he told me the story that he was slamming Chamberlain.
 
After the surrender at Appomattox, Chamberlain immediately wrote a letter to his sister Sarah Chamberlain. This is the earliest account of events of the surrender from Chamberlain available. In the letter he writes of the surrender,

"—had the last shot and the last man killed, in their campaign; and yesterday was designated to receive the surrender of the arms of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. The bare mention of these facts seems like boasting, but I assure you I do not feel any of that spirit. I only rejoice that I was here and bore my part in the crowning Triumphs of the war. It was a scene worthy of a pilgrimage, yesterday, when the old 'Third Brigade' of the 1 st Div. was drawn up to receive the surrender of the Rebel arms. My Brigade you know consists of 9 Regts. The remnant of the old 5 th Corps, veterans of thirty battles. They number about six thousand men all told- on the right was old Massachusetts with the remnants of her 9th, 18th, 22d and 32d. Then Maine, her 1st, 2d, and 20th - Michigan 1st, 4th, and 16th - Pennsylvania- with the sturdy relics of her 82d, 83d, 91st, 118th, and 155th .- with my staff and the old flag- the red maltese cross on a white field with blue border. I took post on the right at 5 a.m., and received first Maj. Gen Gordon with his corps—Stonewall Jackson's—then Longstreet's corps. with Hoods Andersons & Pickett's old Divisions— men we had faced a score of times and almost recognized by face. Pickett's splendid Div. only stacked 53 muskets and not a single stand of colors—we had so completely used them up at 5 Forks. Last came Hill's Corp.—by Divisions—Hill himself being killed. We received them with the honors due to troops—at a shoulder—in silence. They came to a shoulder on passing my flag and preserved perfect order. When the head of their column reached our left, they halted face toward our line and close to it—say 4 or 5 yards-- and stacked their arms and piled their colors. Poor fellows. I pitied them from the bottom of my heart. Those arms had been well handled and flags bravely borne."

SOURCE: "Joshua L. Chamberlain to 'My dear Sae,' Appomattox Court House, April 13, 1865," George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, Bowdoin College, Joshua L. Chamberlain Collection, M27. Online.
 
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People do seem to either love him or hate him.....
General Chamberlain had two (related) things against him. The first was that movie that didn't always stick religiously to the facts (why anyone would learn history from Hollywood is beyond me) and the second was the jazzing up by William Randolph Hurst of an article that the General had written. Once there is a crack in a historical picture, the whole business is less credible. But his veteran contemporaries in Maine--who looked very poorly upon bravado & boast--accepted his innocence.
 
The Appomattox Generals book on Joshua Chamberlain and CSA John Brown Gordon mentioned that they saluted to each other; Chamberlain first which confused the Confederates at first but they soon saluted back to them.

What gets to me is when the Federal troops saw how hungry and downcast the Confederate soldiers were during the surrender. The Federal troops rushed over to the Confederates and gave them water from their canteens and hardtack which afterwards many of the Confederates had stomach aches for they didn't have much food for a long time(and times with no food).
 
In Gordon's "Reminiscences of the Civil War" he does not actually corroborate Chamberlain's version, but puts it as such:

"General Chamberlain describes this incident in the following words:"

Gordon allows Chamberlain's version in his memoir but does not write about his description of the event (horse rearing salute). I guess you can read what you will into this........Chamberlain's description in Gordon was from a NY Times article printed May 4, 1901.
 
There has been some dispute over the wound Chamberlain received at the Battle of Quaker Road (the bullet striking his left breast). For instance, Spear claimed that it never happened as he was with him the entire time. Even on videos of the American Battlefield Trust, one of the guides scoffed it off as ever happening. However, I stumbled across a primary source quote in which Chamberlain visited a Dr. in 1868 to address his primary groin wound. In that letter to his family, he mentioned how the Dr. also examined his chest where a bullet hit him in the left breast. In addition, there was an article printed in 1907 in which a visiting journalist described the field jacket that Chamberlain was wearing at the time and that he had, in fact, a bullet wound to the left breast.

So, if Chamberlain was not wounded in the left breast, why bother to mention that wound too in a casual letter to his sister? And, if that wound wasn't there, how did the journalist see it in the jacket when he visited the Chamberlain home in 1907? I suppose the point that I am getting at here is - Spear was certainly present (a primary source), yet obviously didn't see it happen (or lied about seeing it). General Wise of the Southern army acknowledged the wound during the surrender ceremony. So, even with primary sources like Chamberlain and/or Spear, it can be tough to determine. But, regarding the left breast wound, it more than likely did happen in my opinion. Getting sources from other leads, such as the everyday soldier as somebody previously mentioned above in this thread or from journalists in this case, I completely agree with and is crucial. In addition, the book by Dr. Rasbach on Chamberlain's wounding site at Petersburg does just that (utilizes other sources both North/South) to cross-examine the facts and it truly helps to gain greater insight into the truth as much as possible.

And lastly, regardless if the discussion is about the salute between Gordon and Chamberlain (or any of Chamberlain's wounds), one thing in particular that Chamberlain does throughout much of his works is to state that the experiences are not written as a true 'historian.' In other words, he wrote just as he experienced them at the time and writing from that deep sense of passion and emotion - not as a 'historian.' However, a lot of authors today take it as 'fact.' At the beginning of his book, 'The Passing of the Armies' for instance, Chamberlain candidly admits that those experiences are not without a form of coloring. If Gordon and Chamberlain did experience that special moment together during the surrender, it's not that he may have been purposely lying, but it was from Chamberlain's own interpretation from someone deep with emotion, passion, and of course being skilled with the pen and not always from a true professional 'historian' standpoint as he openly admits, which I can respect...
 
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What we have here is the classic juxtaposition of history (what happened in the past) and memory (how we interpret what happened in the past). That Gordon, Chamberlain, and their troops were there, on that day and time, is a clear historical truth. If we accept Chamberlain's day-after letter as genuine, then we can add that the Union troops went to shoulder arms to honor their former foes. From those facts, the Gordon/Chamberlain story emerges more likely as memory, albeit one that fits the already established historic narrative. As noted in the thread, both men were part of the reconciliation trend during the late 19th century, both occupied influential public positions, gave talks and speeches about their war experiences, and both published readable and compelling memoirs decades after the war. All of those factors created a favorable environment for the story to be adopted by both men and subsequently included in the historical telling of the surrender.
Contrast this with the outcome of former Confederate William B. Oates' efforts to have a monument honoring the 15th Alabama placed at the furthest point his troops held on July 2, 1863 on Little Round Top. In 1899, based on his claim that his brother was killed near a specific rock located close to the 20th Maine's position, Oates petitioned the Gettysburg Park Commissioners to allow a memorial to be placed on this spot. Nearly 5 years later, the commissioners reached out to Chamberlain for input before permanently quashing the plan (which violated the general rule for the placement of Confederate monuments). Unlike the consensus reached with Gordon regarding Appomattox, Chamberlain dismissed Oates' version of the battle completely and put the final nail in the plan's coffin. Thanks to this, and enhanced by The Killer Angels and its cinematic counterpart, the memory of the fight on Little Round Top remains focused entirely on the 20th Maine's heroic defense and Chamberlain's qualities of a leader (with a bit of Strong Vincent thrown in). That this memory was built at the expense of another credible, eyewitness interpretation confirms its clear purpose: to enhance the reputation of the 20th Maine and its commander and their place in the history/memory of the Battle of Gettysburg.*
Over the past few years, the NPS has been working to either explain, mitigate, or dismiss the long-standing memory elements that have lingered, which may explain the ranger's somewhat undiplomatic insistence that the Gordon/Chamberlain story was bogus. Given this trend, I wonder whether any Gettysburg tour guides are including Oates' version of events on Little Round Top in their narratives? Just noticed in "similar threads" one titled "Chamberlain Rock." Guess I should check that one out too...

* See Glenn W. LaFantasie, A Gettysburg Requiem: The Life and Lost Causes of Confederate Colonel William B. Oates (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006, pp. 162-65, 280-285, 288-301)
 
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