About and that is interpretation at Little Round Top. Joshua lawrence chamberlain. Why did we choose this topic . I think i pushed it. Last fall, chris took my civil war class out to Little Round Top. Notid an incredible job just telling us about what butened at Little Round Top he did an insightful job of helping my students understand the construction of historical narratives. Focusing on chamberlain and the different accounts from Joshua Chamberlain. Way ford up a different my students to understand. I want to do a quick plug. Is aould note chris Gettysburg College alum. 2006. While at gettysburg, i believe is when you started to do some volunteer work for the park . No. My first year at the college, i worked at [indiscernible] i got an internship at the park, that was my First National park experience. I fell in love with it and i have been fortunate to be able to make a career out of it. Its a wonderful journey. I wish i was a student now. The program does Amazing Things across the parks. The public history at the college, so many things. That i wish i had at my disposal when i was a student. Hiredhould add, we just another civil war historian. He is currently at connecticut college. You might have read his book. Call ant i will important impressive piece of scholarship. The students at Gettysburg College and the ones who are future Gettysburg College students will have jim to take classes from. Is this the official announcement . Its breaking news. Its kind of breaking. Last week is a think when everything was finally settled. He signed on the dotted line. He will definitely be here in the fall. Thats fantastic. Chris, i will get it started. You gave us a little bit of background about your Early Experiences of the part. Sense, like to have a how visitors who came to Little Round Top who came to the monument, would you tell us what informed their thinking . What were their that is a tough question to be able to answer. One of the things i find fascinating about Little Round Top is you have these layers of history stacked on top of one another. You have the prebattle history which is fascinating. The battle itself. Then the development of the battlefield at Little Round Top, the organizations that managed the landscape, and that is fascinating. Then you have this additional layer of Popular Culture on top of it. Started with the park in 2003 and if you were to ask me what the general Visitor Experience was at Little Round Top in 2003, a lot of it was driven by Popular Culture. The movie gettysburg, the novel the killer angels, something about those pieces of work really brought Joshua Chamberlain and the story to life. Early on in my career, gettysburg the movie was a touchstone for people. Set, they sawox the director cut. There is respect i have for visitors, they are trying to story and thehe battle with Joshua Chamberlain, because it has become a fixture of american fabric. I want to go to a place like Little Round Top and feel as if they are communing with the authenticity of the hill. , iflook at Little Round Top you were to go to the 20th main 1982, you would barely find a trail out there. Overgrown. It has evolved so much. Now you go in a portion that was once called the chamberlain avenue was repaved. The site gets incredible visitation, it is the single most visited spot. We get one million visitors a year and almost every of them goes to Little Round Top. This sense of, these rocks were here, and that sense of communing with this and the spirit of the past. Chamberlaint think i dont think the movie gettysburg has significance to our visitors today as it was 10 years ago or as it was 15 years ago. , joshuatain sense has kind of outlived the movie. He has a significant now in his own right in terms of how americans who visit Little Round Top are thinking about the past. You can buy tshirts with Joshua Chamberlains face, go to the chamberlain tavern, Joshua Chamberlain action figures. He has outlived the popularity of the movie. What you think about the movie gettysburg and its depiction of chamberlain . You can talk about the combat, jeff daniels. To be ableugh for me to look at that movie sense,vely because in a im emotionally attached to it. When did it come out, 1992 . 1993. Im 10 years old and the movie captivated me. I fell in love with Joshua Chamberlain, with that depiction of the battle. I dislike it when individuals look at a movie like gettysburg or a novel the killer angels and try to pick it apart, try to critique it as a work of history. I was listening to john stephanie, and she was talking about the movie the patriot and how that movie took liberties with the story of the revolution. I think hamilton, the broadway play it is a work of art. It draws from the past, it is kind of its own thing. The value of those things, gettysburg, hamilton, is not that they are this analysis of the past but they are entry points for people. They get people interested. They ignite some sort of spark that hopefully, and in my case, encourage you to want to learn more, to visit places like gettysburg. In thek saw a huge surge mid1990s after the movie came out in that social trail to the monument became the table and highway. The Joshua Chamberlain highway. Just as joshua would have wanted it. No doubt. [laughter] culturevalue of popular is that it provides people with that entry points. It gets them interested. Value in those , than those mediums things that detract from the film or the play. Openedn, after that play , the Hamilton NationalHistoric Site saw an increase in ititation 174 higher than had been. Im sure they were not prepared for age. No, no. I think, with a great deal of respect for the agency i work for, a lot of times the Parts Services are reactionary. That happened with ken burns as well. That is what i was thinking. Chris is overwhelmed. That was back in the day when fall was not particularly busy. Your season was mostly the summer. Burns was in the fall so they did not have people staffed to observe that visitation, which is a good problem to have. That pointuld say to is what we are seeing at parks like gettysburg is this evolution in visitation where on aations are somewhat downward trajectory, it is not as calamitous as some people make it out to be, but what is more interesting is patterns of visitation are changing. On a normal day in the summer, Little Round Top is busy. October, Little Round Top is incredibly busy. Summer time the visitation is when people go to parks, that is true, but we get a ton of people in the fall now. [indiscernible] yeah. They were all over the place. They still are. We can talk about that too. The effect that has had on the around top is increased visitation. People want to go to the hail, they want to touch the name on it, they want to climb up on the boulders. Management,the park Little Round Top is one of the systemsgile park diesel park ecosystems. We have a little we have a lot of challenges. , works that had been built during the battle and we staffed over the years. But it fragile place, receives incredible visitation. I was going to say two points. My father took me to gettysburg in 1988, i had visitation with my father on friday. It happened to be the 100 wendy for the anniversary, he had no idea. 125th anniversary, he had no idea. We took my picture in Little Round Top in 1988, this little where leeng next to fell. We have double the amount of people watching this live then we have ever had, so this shows you what Little Round Top is. Name recognition coming around. Up tobout people going see the scope of the battlefield . You have seen most of the battlefield on the hill area. You can see the scope, you can see straight up on a clear day. Did you see people doing that to showcase how broad certainly. We are fortunate that we have this amazing cohort of battlefield guidance. Es. Guids these are contractors or selfemployed. Virtually all of them get out to Little Round Top. Much that appeals to the visitor that you can find. One, it is this iconic landscape. It is unique, it is this hillside covered with rocks and boulders, it is this iconic terrain. You can see almost the entirety of the battlefield and there is , giving people the spatial understanding of the battle. But at the end of the day, it is beautiful up on Little Round Top. You can watch the sunset over the hills. Such a poll Little Round Top has on people. Little round top has on people. You have to park your car, go out to the summit, take that expanse in. You go up to Little Round Top any day of the week, the place is packed. Our childhood memories of gettysburg and Little Round Top. A powerful reminder that often that first connection to the past is an imaginative one. It is not necessarily historical. Public historians dont cite that very often. Academic historians almost always lose sight of that. It goes back to your point about the movie and what you said about the movie minded me of what Steven Spielberg said when he gave his november 19 address at the national cemetery. He made an obvious but important points. What he does is different than what we do. We have different purposes and we connect with our audiences in different ways. That emotional linkage or connection is vital in that is why it is reaffirming in the spring to be driving around the battlefield and wherever you turn, there is another school bus. Even if those kids are not paying the best attention to the guide, i see them climbing over those blocks, hoping that they dont fall and break an arm or leg. Im thinking, they will never forget that. Maybe someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, they will pick up a book and think more seriously about the civil war. I absolutely agree. The Education Specialist at the tellary park will often our young interns or seasonals about that very thing and oftentimes, we ask them, how did you get into history . What propelled you to want to work at gettysburg or take this internship . More often than not, it comes from a shared experience as a child. That might be visiting a place like gettysburg, it might be talking to your grandfather about his experience in world war ii, any host of things. Ont think most visitors for most visitors, it is not an intellectual exercise, it is an emotional exercise. That is what is pulling them there. The value of that is it provides an entry point to study the past and this is something the park service cares deeply about, it transitions people from not caring about parks and the past to becoming stewards of parks and the past. That is a job that the National ParkService Takes seriously, so this idea of stewardship. We have to preserve this place because we want to pass this legacy onto our kids. Talking about childhood experiences on the battlefield, i will bring a back to Joshua Chamberlain. I was fortunate to get to know alice locke and her husband jim, alex wrote what i think a biography of Joshua Chamberlain that is exceptional. She did not find much fault with Joshua Chamberlain but she did a lot of research. The book is called in the hands of providence. She told me they met Joshua Chamberlains granddaughter and jimshared with alice and some mementos and stories, including the story of Joshua Chamberlain taking his grandchildren to little round , got a the monument picture taken. Recall that the grandchildren called joshua ginnie, for general. There might be a good point here. Help us understand how chamberlain made sense and depicted what happened at Little Round Top and the immediate week of the battle and maybe our audience has some questions, then take us into the postwar period, if you could, starting at the end of the battle, chamberlain writes a series of accounts. How should we understand how he understood the fighting . The first thing we need to do recognize that civil war combat is inherently confusing and chaotic and any one individual has a very limited scope and understanding of what they went through. In the case of gettysburg, is 90 minutes. The fighting at Little Round Top is relatively brief. Chaotic, itsing, was an assault on the senses. It was this crucible of fire and confusion. Chamberlain is a brilliant guy, a brilliant man. He was a socalled novice in terms of commanding men in battle. He had been in the army for less than a year by that point. He is in his mid30s, he fights this 90 minute battle commanding 350 men. When all is said and done, otherrlain, as with every general in both armies, had to write a report that is submitted to his superiors outlines that outlines his role in the fighting. That is written by chamberlin i want to say on the sixth of july, 1863, a few days after the battle. In that report, he tries to make sense of what is inherently confusing. Firsts chamberlains attempt to put into words what he and the surviving men went through. What we will see with Joshua Chamberlain to get to your point about chamberlain bringing , thatandkids to the help is something many veterans did, but it is a testament to how, for Joshua Chamberlain, the battle of gettysburg and specifically those 90 minutes on Little Round Top would come to define and dominate his life. It is how he understood himself. We have seen before his academic career, his time at bowdoin, and everything after, governor of maine, president of bowdoin college, all of that is important but it is in the periphery. His life is built on this 90 minutes at Little Round Top. Time as is at time passes, chamberlains understanding of what he survived and what he did kind of kind of evolves, it changes. He wrote seven accounts of the battle of gettysburg. 6, 1863, hisjuly official reports. The last is in a magazine. Between those, you have these other accounts and none of those accounts agree 100 with the other. Departure points, they are all slightly different in how chamberlain understands what he did, what he ordered, what he said, and his role. Throughout this postwar period, postbattle period, chamberlain understands how important that moment was in his life and he will guard the story of the battle of Little Round Top and the hill itself, he will guard very jealously. Your point that there is an evolution in how chamberlain remembered and wrote about the battle, and his depiction of the contradictionsre among these accounts. Mind,hat make a, in your does that make, in your mind, Joshua Chamberlain unreliable as a historical witness . That is a great question because we talked about that the other night, diaries, memorize, stuff like that that is written after the fact. When you have all these different narratives from one person and they are starting to not talk to each other, it makes you question some of the legitimacy of some of what he is saying. Whoow that there are people have questioned that before, there are people like we have in our discussion area online who is a biggestrren are then chamberlain. You have to take that into consideration when you look through all this. Butays this in 1863, saying this in the 1870s or 1880s. Which one is the real one or which one has been blemished a little less . I think it goes into the historical memory of the veteran and showcasing what he believes he did himself, what he didnt thingd i think that is a that is sometimes a timeless thing with some veterans and i think we have to take all six or so of those and put them into perspective. Believe the accounts that chamberlain wrote, they were closer to the event itself, do you believe those accounts, by the very fact that they were closer to the event itself, that they are more accurate, more trustworthy, or should we not even be asking that question . Is the question im asking not a valuable question . To behink Everyone Wants the hero in their own story and that is true for Joshua Chamberlain. Idea, the facts that he buys that initial report , to we after the battle believe that account more . I dont know if that is always the case. If you look like if you look , the first real official historian of the battle up whileburg, he shows the wounded are still in field hospitals, dedicates the remainder of his life to the study of the battle of gettysburg and arguably he knew more about the battle than a lot of them who thought who fought at Little Round Top. With chamberlain, how his story evolvesd morphs and morphs, i dont think it is something he is doing intentionally to blow his own horn. They might be a l