Alice Li
HIST 1572
Battle Field Analysis: Gettysburg

The 20th Maine
In the summer of 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued a second call for volunteers . Because so many Maine men responded to the call for volunteers, the state collected the extra men from various regions and collected them to form the 20th Maine, the last of the state’s three-year volunteer infantry regiments. While other Maine units consisted of men from roughly similar areas, the 20th came from all over. At its’ initiation, the infantry had over 1,600 troops . Most were farmers and lumberman before the war and barely a handful of the men had any military experience. But these men had seen hard labor and were familiar with firearms. The commanding officer was Colonel Adelbert Ames, who was a graduate of West Point and recipient of …show more content…
Chamberlain . Ames attempted to turn the untrained volunteers into an effective regiment and though the men did not like him, he was respected. The 20th traveled to Washington, D.C., to join the Army of the Potomac as part of the “Light Brigade” of the Fifth Corps and from there, they had marched to Antietam and were held in reserve during the battle . They suffered relatively minor casualties in the assault on Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg and were quarantined due to smallpox at Chancellorsville. Upon promotion of Ames, Chamberlain was promoted to Colonel and given command of the regiment. By the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, the regiment was down to 266 soldiers as a result of illness, injuries, death, and desertion and the 20th was considered a weak link in Vincent’s brigade as they had largely been untested . However, the regiment’s ranks were integrated with experienced soldiers when Chamberlain, who had risen to Colonel of the 20th, could recruit the 120 three-year enlistees from the 2nd Maine infantry who were in a state of mutiny because a large part of the regiment, consisting