The story of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and the 20th Maine at Gettysburg is one of the most celebrated moments in American military history. The desperate bayonet charge down Little Round Top on July 2, 1863, has been immortalized in books, documentaries, and the film Gettysburg. But beneath the legend lies a controversy that historians have debated for over a century. At the center of the disagreement are three men: Chamberlain, his second-in-command Major Ellis Spear, and Confederate Colonel William C.
Oates of the 15th Alabama. Each left behind accounts of the fight that do not fully align. The charge that saved the Union line may not have unfolded the way the movies portray it. Chamberlain, a former professor of rhetoric, would go on to become governor of Maine after the war.
His prominent position allowed him to shape the narrative of what happened on that rocky hillside. But not everyone agreed with his version of events, including some of his own officers. Ellis Spear, who commanded the left flank of the 20th Maine during the battle, held a much darker view of war. Having endured the brutal Overland Campaign after Gettysburg, Spear saw combat as a nasty, bloody business, not a glorious affair.
His accounts of the charge differ from Chamberlain’s in important ways. According to the popular version, Chamberlain ordered his exhausted men to fix bayonets and swing down the hill like a door, sweeping the Confederates from the slope. The movie Gettysburg depicts this as a coordinated, fluid maneuver. Spear’s memory was different.
He recalled seeing the right flank move first, with the charge unfolding in a far less orderly fashion. The disagreement between the two men grew so intense that late in Chamberlain’s life, when he published a final glorified account of the battle for the Hearst newspapers, Spear was incensed. The two men had a falling out over the way the story was told. Adding another layer to the controversy is the account of William C.
Oates. The Confederate commander claimed that he had already ordered his men to withdraw before Chamberlain launched his counterattack. If true, the 20th Maine’s charge struck an enemy that was already retreating, rather than breaking a determined Confederate assault. Oates had his own reasons for shaping the record.
He would become governor of Alabama after the war, and he lost a brother in the fighting at Little Round Top. The battle was as personal to him as it was to Chamberlain. Chamberlain’s reliability has also been questioned. Years after the war, he returned to Petersburg to locate where he had been shot through both hips.
He concluded it was at a position called Fort Damnation. He was mistaken about the location. The error has led some to wonder how accurate his memories of Gettysburg were. Historians note that human memory is imperfect, especially for traumatic events.
Chamberlain’s confusion at Petersburg can be explained by the similar terrain of the fortifications there. But it raises questions about how much weight to give any single account of the battle. What is known for certain is limited. The Confederates attacked the Union position.
The Union soldiers defended it. The Union soldiers counterattacked. The Confederates withdrew. Everything beyond that is interpretation.
The ground itself tells a more complicated story than the movie suggests. The 20th Maine’s position on Little Round Top was far smaller than usually imagined. The unit had suffered heavy casualties and was stretched thin. The slope they defended is not the dramatic hill depicted on screen.
One of the least visited parts of the story involves Company B of the 20th Maine, commanded by Captain Walter G. Morrill. Chamberlain sent the company forward as skirmishers, and he later claimed he never heard from them again. But Company B had moved to a stone wall between the Round Tops.
When Oates’s men began to withdraw, the supposedly missing company rose from behind the wall and poured fire into the Confederates, hastening their retreat from the field. The placement of battlefield markers itself is a source of uncertainty. Many monuments were erected decades after the battle, sometimes 20, 30, or 40 years later. Veterans often placed them based on memory and conversation rather than precise locations.
What appears on the ground today may not reflect exactly where events occurred. The story of the 20th Maine was largely cemented in the public imagination by fiction. Michael Shaara’s novel The Killer Angels, and its adaptation into the film Gettysburg, transformed the charge into one of the most pivotal moments of the Civil War. Ken Burns’s documentary series further embedded the legend in American memory.
These works shaped how generations of visitors understand the battle. Chamberlain received the Medal of Honor in 1893, decades after the war, and much later than many other recipients. His own writings, however poetic and disputed, lifted the men of the 20th Maine into lasting memory. He framed their stand as one of the defining actions of the war, and that framing has endured.
One of the more remarkable stories connected to the unit involves Sergeant Andrew Tozier, who carried the regiment’s colors. When a wounded corporal said he could no longer shoot, Tozier took the rifle and continued firing while holding the flag. When the corporal was too injured to continue, the flag returned to Tozier. Both Spear and Chamberlain witnessed the act.
Tozier received the Medal of Honor for his conduct. After the war, Tozier struggled. He fell into a life of crime, according to accounts of his later years. The governor of Maine, recognizing his high-profile status as a wounded veteran, invited him into the governor’s household to rehabilitate.
That governor was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, still looking after his old soldiers. Historians who study the battle caution that the accounts of officers must be weighed carefully. Men who became politicians after the war had reasons to shape their legacies. Chamberlain and Oates both built political careers.
Their versions of the battle reflect not only what happened but how they wanted to be remembered. The question of who ordered what first may never be resolved. Oates may have given the order to withdraw. The 20th Maine may have launched its charge as the Confederates were already pulling back.
The two events may have happened so close together that neither side fully understood what the other was doing. The rocky, forested terrain of Little Round Top makes the battle even harder to reconstruct. Boulders that were present in 1863 remain in place, offering countless places where soldiers could have rallied or hidden. The charge was not a neat, movie-style maneuver.
It was a desperate, chaotic rush down a hillside, with men breaking formation and becoming vulnerable. For those seeking certainty, historians offer little comfort. The sources agree on the broad outline but conflict on the details. Spear and Chamberlain could not agree despite serving side by side.
Oates’s account adds a third perspective that contradicts both Union officers on key points. The fullest understanding comes from walking the ground, reading the letters and reports left behind, and weighing each account against the others. Even then, the precise truth of July 2, 1863, on Little Round Top remains elusive. What is not disputed is the outcome.
The men of the 20th Maine held their ground. They kept the Union flank from being turned. The Confederate attack was repulsed, and the Union line held. In that sense, the legend is rooted in fact, however contested the details may be.
The charge became one of the most famous actions of the Civil War, not solely because of what happened but because of how it was told. The combination of Chamberlain’s writings, Shaara’s novel, and the film adaptation created a story so powerful that it now shapes how visitors see the battlefield. The truth, as historians are fond of saying, lies somewhere in between. The 20th Maine was real.
The charge was real. The men who fought there were real. The precise sequence of events, the orders given, and the moments of decision will always carry a degree of uncertainty. Chamberlain was bent but not broken, much like the tree beside one of the monuments on the hill.
The same could be said for the story itself, shaped by memory, ambition, and the passage of time. The legend endures because it captures something true about the men who stood there, even if every detail cannot be verified. What remains certain is that on July 2, 1863, at the extreme left of the Union line, a regiment from Maine held the ground when it mattered most.
That fact stands at the center of the story, surrounded by layers of myth, memory, and disagreement that may never be fully untangled.