Confederate cannon fire roared through the trees to greet the 450 soldiers of the 20^th Maine Regiment as they made their way into position on the southeast side of Little Round Top Mountain at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863. The unit’s leader, Lieutenant Colonel Chamberlain received his orders from his commanding officer Colonel Strong Vincent: “I place you here! This is the left of the Union line. You understand. You are to hold at all costs.” In other words, allowing the Confederate Army to get around or through the 20^th position would expose the Union line and put the entire Army at risk of being encircled from the front and the rear. The Confederates struck not long thereafter, and, thwarted on their first attempt, made repeated probing strikes looking for a weak point. The men from Maine put up a brave stand for over an hour in the late afternoon heat until finally a lack of ammunition and the unit’s own casualties (dead and wounded) were making holding their position untenable. According to his orders and in his own mind, retreat was not an option.  Chamberlain resolutely called out, “Bayonet!” His officers and sergeants echoed his command, “Fix Bayonets!” 

Two hundred men of the 20^th who could still fight rose and fixed their bayonets on the end of their rifles. Then the fateful order came, “Charge!” His men rushed down the slope of Little Round Top yelling at the top of their lungs, not sure how many Confederate soldiers lie ahead nor whether death, maiming, capture, or in hope against all hope, victory awaited them at the other end. Chamberlain, sword drawn, rushed down the hillside with his men. The Twentieth's bold action caught the Confederate soldiers completely off guard. Some returned fire, but most fled in disarray down the hill as the men from Maine pursued. The 20^th managed to capture approximately 300 of its foe going from almost certain defeat to a stunning victory.  They braced for a Confederate counterattack, but none came: the 20^th by risking everything had fulfilled its mission.

Chamberlain received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions on Little Round Top. Looking back it is hard to say what caused the soldiers of the 20^th Maine to act with such bravery that day. Chamberlain, a college English professor before the war, put it this way during the dedication of the Maine monuments at Gettysburg some years later: “We rose in soul above the things which even the Declaration of Independence pronounces the inalienable rights of human nature…Happiness, liberty, life, we laid on the altar of offering, or committed to the furies of destruction…We were beckoned on by a vision of destiny; we saw our Country moving forward, charged with the sacred trusts of man. We believed in its glorious career…[This is] why we fought for the Union.”

            Chamberlain closed expressing his heartfelt hope and expectation that others, in future times, would be inspired by the events of that day and throughout the war. “In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear, but spirits linger, to consecrate the ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision shall pass into their souls. This is the great reward of service. To live, far out and on, in the life of others; this is the mystery of the Christ,--to give life’s best for such a high sake that it shall be found again in life eternal.”

            Chamberlain’s drawing of the parallel between the soldiers’ sacrifice and that of Christ, who set the ultimate example for all mankind, is appropriate. In both instances, the willingness to lay down one’s life resulted in great benefit to others. Thanks to the soldiers of the 20^th Maine and the millions of others who have fought and far too often died we enjoy temporal liberty in this country; thanks to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross we can enjoy eternal life and liberty in God’s kingdom. At Little Round Top, Chamberlain saw no alternative if he was to fulfill His commander’s orders to hold the ground, but to place everything on the line and charge towards the enemy. Christ saw no alternative, if he was to fulfill his Commander’s mission of reconciling man to God, but to go to the cross on Calvary. Man stood guilty in God’s court of eternal justice and someone needed to pay the price. The Apostle Paul described it this way in his letter to the Philippians: “[Christ] humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” The result of Chamberlain’s obedience was the Medal of Honor and the praise and grateful adoration of future generations. The result of Christ’s obedience, again as Paul recorded, was that “God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name, which is above every name…”  

Chamberlain was right: in great deeds something abides, whether on the Battlefield at Gettysburg or much more profoundly on the cross at Calvary. May we all continue to be inspired by their example.

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Randy DeSoto is the author of the book We Hold These Truths, which addresses how leaders have appealed to the beliefs in God's Providence and inalienable rights throughout our nation's history.