LAST RESORT?

It is a story made famous by the likes of Ken Burns, Jeff Daniels, and Ted Turner. A small, inexperienced infantry regiment in the Civil War finds itself defending the key to the outcome of the largest battle in the history of North America. Attacked by a force superior in both numbers and experience, the little band of Mainers holds off assault after assault and, with a surprise bayonet charge, saves the Union army, and perhaps the Union itself, from destruction.

Particularly in the past few decades, few stories from the Civil War have received as much attention as that of Colonel Joshua L. Chamberlain and his 20th Maine Infantry at Gettysburg. The subject of novels, documentaries, artwork, and a feature film, the efforts of this one regiment to save the Union army in the epic three-day battle have become legendary.

Placed on the far left of the Union position on the battle’s decisive second day, the unit became the target of a massive Confederate assault on the end of the Yankee line resting on a small hill that later became known as “Little Round Top.” After an hour and a half of intense, sometimes hand-to-hand fighting, and with a third of his men down and others running out of ammunition, Chamberlain and his men went on the offensive, carrying out an unexpected bayonet charge that swept their Alabama attackers from the field and secured the Union left.

More than a century ago, Colonel William C. Oates, commander of the 15th Alabama soldiers who attacked the 20th Maine, wrote of his Yankee counterparts: “[Chamberlain’s] skill and persistency and the great bravery of his men saved Little Round Top and the Army of the Potomac from defeat.”

Decades after Oates, Southern historical writer Shelby Foote said of the Mainers and Alabamians who fought on the small but tactically crucial hill: “[T]he men of these two outfits fought as if the outcome of the battle,