Moral Courage and the Civil War
ON JUNE 7, 2019, one day after the 75th anniversary of the D -Day landings, Maine’s governor Janet T. Mills signed “An Act To Establish ‘Ballad of the 20th Maine’ as the Official State Ballad.” The 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, commanded by college professor-turned-colonel Joshua Chamberlain, is known primarily for its stand on Little Round Top during the Battle of Gettysburg, in July 1863. The ballad, Governor Mills explained at the bill signing, reminds “us of our proud heritage, the role our great state has played in the history of our nation, and to be forever grateful to those who served and saved our country.”
Written by The Ghost of Paul Revere, a folk band from Portland, and released in 2015, the new state ballad is narrated by a soldier from another Maine regiment, Andrew Tozier, whose account of marching up to the aid of the 20th concludes with the image of Chamberlain, “the lion of Bowdoin,” shouting “bayonets” as the soldiers run down the hill against the enemy:
We were steadfast as katahdin, hard as winters rain
Take that rebel yell with you to hell
We are the 20th Maine
… Be proud and true you are a union soldier
Stand fast, ye are the boys of Maine
Like many Civil War engagements, this episode has acquired the sheen of legend over the years. Nevertheless, it is indisputable that the Mainers held their little hill and that the twin federal victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, achieved at the beginning of July 1863, proved a tide-changing moment in the war. The bravery of those volunteer soldiers has long been a source of pride to their home state.
I learned about the new law from a colleague who grew up in Maine. The article he forwarded was less about the law itself, however, than about objections raised by two state lawmakers to the ballad’s attitude toward the South. “[W]e are not Union,” Representative Frances Head (R-Bethel) argued in a public hearing in May, in reference to the ballad’s use of the period term Union, as reported in the Maine Beacon: “[W]e are united states. And I find it just a little bit—I won’t say offensive but that’s what I mean—to say that we’re any better than the South was.” Another state lawmaker, Representative Roger Reed (R-Carmel), also registered concern:
I am a lover of history and especially a lover of the Civil War period and regardless of what side people fought on, they were fighting for something they truly believed in. … Many of them were great Christian men on both sides. They fought hard and they were fighting for states’ rights as they saw them.
I hear in this meretricious evenhandedness an echo of President Trump’s insistence that there were “very fine people, on both sides” of the deadly 2017
