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Wash Roebling’s Gettysburg letter
(Emerging Civil War, 2023-08) Zander, Cecily
There is one location on the Gettysburg battlefield where heroism remains hotly contested. Atop two small hills at the field’s southern terminus, a host of monuments attest to the bravery of Union soldiers and celebrate the service of three of their leaders. On Gettysburg’s Round Tops visitors will find tributes to Lieutenant Colonel Strong Vincent, who commanded the 3rd Brigade of the Army of the Potomac’s V Corps; Brigadier General Gouverneur Kemble Warren, who served as the army’s Chief Engineer during the battle; and Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the regimental commander of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment. Warren’s monument is a life-sized pean to the man himself, Vincent’s two stone sentinels mark the site of his mortal wounding and the location of his regiment (Pennsylvania’s 83rd Infantry), the latter topped by a bronze likeness of the lawyer-turned-soldier, while Chamberlain’s name alone appears on the memorial to his regiment—with no image of the sometime college professor enshrined in either granite or bronze on the battlefield.