>> why did we choose this topic, i don't know. >> did you? fall, chris took my civil war class out to little round top and did an incredible job, not just telling us about what happened at little round top, but he also did a really insightful job of helping my students understand the construction of historical narratives and focusing on chamberlain. a different way for my students to understand. >> before chris gets going, i want to do a quick plug. chris is a gettysburg college alum. 2006.raduated in i while at gettysburg is when believe you began to do some volunteer work for the park. >> my first year at the college, i worked at the institute. internship at an the park working with john and scott. it was my first national park experience and i fell in love with it. i have been fortunate enough to make a career out of it. it has been a wonderful journey. i wish i was a student now. the program does amazing things across parks. so many things. i wish i had at my disposal when i was a student. >> i should add we just hired jimher civil war historian, . he is currently at connecticut college. you might have read his book. it is an important piece of scholarship. the students at gettysburg college, and future gettysburg college students, will have jim to take classes from. >> fantastic. >> is that an official announcement? >> i hope i have not jumped the gun. >> breaking news. >> last week is when i think things were settled and he signed on the dotted line. he will definitely be here in the fall. >> fantastic. that is great. >> chris, i will get it started. a little bit of background about your early experiences at the park. i would like to have a sense how visitors who came to little rock top, who came to the monument, can you tell us what informative thinking, what were their expectations when they came to one of your tours? >> 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 pre-battle history which is fascinating. the battle itself. then the development of the battlefield at little round top, the different organizations and entities that managed the landscape, and that is all fascinating. then you have this additional layer of popular culture on top of it. i 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 in my career, "gettysburg" the movie was a touchstone for people. they got the box set, they saw the director cut. there is respect i have for visitors, they are trying to commune with the story and the 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. you look at little round top, if you were to go to the 20th main monument in 1982, you would barely find a trail out there. it was 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 but in gettysburg military parts. -- parks. we get one million visitors a year and almost every of them goes to little round top. it is this sense of, these rocks were here, and that sense of communing with this and the spirit of the past. today, i don't think chamberlain -- let me rephrase that -- i don't think the movie "gettysburg" has significance to our visitors today as it was 10 years ago or as it was 15 years ago. i think in a certain sense, chamberlain in the 20th and 21st century 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 t-shirts with joshua chamberlain's face, go to the chamberlain tavern, joshua chamberlain action figures. he has outlived the popularity of the movie. >> what do you think about the movie "gettysburg" and its depiction of chamberlain? you can talk about the combat, jeff daniels. >> it is tough for me to be able to look at that movie objectively because in a sense, i am so emotionally attached to it. when did it come out, 1992? >> 1993. >> i'm 10 years old and the movie just captivated me. it was amazing. it captivated me. i fell in love with joshua chamberlain, with that depiction of the battle. i dislike it when individuals likeat a movie "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 interview stephanie, and she was talking about the movie "the patriot" and how that movie took liberties with the story of the american revolution in the carolinas. i think "hamilton," the broadway play -- it is a work of art. it draws from the past, it is kind of its own thing. ,he 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. the park saw a huge surge in the "d-1990's after the movie g" 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] but the value of popular culture is that it provides people with that entry. it gets them interested. i find far more value in those works, those mediums, than things that can pick apart and detract from the film or the play. "hamilton," after that play opened, the hamilton national historic site saw an increase in visitation 174% higher than it had been. >> i'm sure they were not prepared for it. >> no, no. i think, with a great deal of respect for the agency i work for, a lot of times, the parks services are reactionary. >> that happened with ken burns as well. >> that is what i was thinking. ken burns. >> chris is overwhelmed. >> also, because that was back in the day when fall was not particularly busy. right? 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. it is difficult. >> but i would say to that point is what we are seeing at parks like gettysburg is this evolution in visitation, where visitations are somewhat on a 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. on a normal day in october, little round top is incredibly busy. it is incredibly busy. that idea of the summer time 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 little round top is increased visitation. ,eople want to go to the hill they want to go to the maine monument they want to touch the , name on it, they want to climb up on the boulders. in terms of the park management, little round top is one of the most fragile park ecosystems. we have a lot of challenges. erosion, soil compaction, works that had been built during the battle and then re-stacked over the years. it is a fragile place, but it receives incredible amounts of visitation. >> i was going to say two points. my father took me to gettysburg for the first time in i had 1988. visitation with my father on friday. he took me there. it happened to be the 125th anniversary, he had no idea. he took me to little round top. that is where we went. we took my picture in little round top in 1988, this little kid standing there. i am also wondering, i will also say 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. what about people going up to see the scope of the battlefield? because 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. certainly. we are fortunate that we have this amazing cohort of licensed battlefield guides. these are contractors or self-employed. ofy give personalized tours the battlefield. virtually all of them get out to little round top. there is so 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 from there, and there is value in that, 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 sun set over the hills. such a pull little round top has on people. such a pull. it is like it is on the gettysburg bucket list. it is something you have to do. 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 at sunset, the place is packed. >> we all have 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 very magical. it is not necessarily historical. historians do not lose sight of 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 point. what he does is different than what we do as historians. 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 rocks, hoping to god that they don't fall and break an arm or leg. i'm 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 gettysburg national military park will often tell 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. i don't think for most visitors, it is not an intellectual exercise, it is an emotional exercise. that is what is pulling them there. again, the value of that is it provides an entry point to study hopefully 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 park service takes very, very 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 it back to chamberlain. i was fortunate to get to know 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 during the research they met joshua chamberlain's granddaughter and she shared with alice and jim some mementos and a range of stories, including the story of joshua chamberlain taking his grandchildren to little round top, to the maine monument, got a picture taken. i do recall that the grandchildren called joshua chamberlain, 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 in the immediate week of the battle and maybe our audience has some questions, then take us into the postwar period, if you could, starting right 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 is we need to 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. it was confusing, chaotic, it was an assault on the senses. it was this crucible of fire and confusion. chamberlain is a brilliant guy, a brilliant, brilliant man. he was a so-called novice in terms of commanding men in battle. he had been in the united states army for less than a year by that point. he is in his mid-30's, he fights this 90 minute battle, commanding 350 men. done, when said and all is over, chamberlain, as with every other general in both armies, had to write a report that is submitted to his superiors that basically outlines his role in the fighting on little round top. that is written by chamberlin i want to say on the sixth of july, 1863, a few days after the battle. in that official report -- he tries to make sense of what is inherently confusing. that is chamberlain's first 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 his grandkids to the hill, that is something many veterans did, but it is a testament to how, for joshua chamberlain, the battle of gettysburg and more specifically those 90 minutes on little round top, would come to define and dominate his life. it is how he understood himself. everything before, his sterling academic career, his time at bowdoin, and everything after, governor of maine, president of bowdoin college, all of that is important, but it fades. his life is built on this 90 minutes at little round top. with chamberlain is, as time passes, chamberlain's understanding of what he survived and what he did on the hill kind of evolves, it changes. he wrote seven accounts of the battle of gettysburg. in the fighting little round top. the first is july 6, 1863, his official reports. one is a magazine article. those, you have other accounts, and none of those accounts agree 100% with the other. they are all departure points, they are all slightly different in how chamberlain understands what he did on the hill, what he ordered, what he said, and his role. throughout this postwar period, post-battle 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 battle, there are contradictions among these accounts. does that make, in your mind, does that make joshua chamberlain unreliable as a historical witness? >> that is a great question because we talked about that the memoirs,ht, diaries, 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. i know that there are people who have questioned that before, there are people like we have in our discussion area online who think that warren is a bigger star than chamberlain. you have to take that into consideration when you look through all this. he says this in 1863, but saying this in the 1870's or 1880's. 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 didn't do, and i think that is a thing 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. >> do you 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 reliable more trustworthy, or should we not even be asking that question? is the question i'm asking not a valuable question? >> i think everyone wants to be the hero in their own story and that is true for joshua chamberlain. in terms of this idea, the fact that he writes that initial report so soon after the battle, to we believe that account more? i don't know if that is always the case. i don't know if that is always the case. if you look at a guy, the first real official historian of the battle of gettysburg, he is a civilian, he shows up while 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 of little round top than those who fought at little round top. with chamberlain, how his story evolves and morphs, i don't think it is something he is necessarily doing intentionally to blow his own horn. they might be a little bit of -- there might be a little bit of that, but what i think he is doing is he is hearing these other perspectives on the same moment, he is getting these other viewpoints and he is trying to make them compatible with his own understanding of what he had gone through on the he played.e role he alludes to this, that men who wear their saw things differently, it does not mean they were wrong. they might both be right. as his understanding and what he did changes and evolves, his understanding of what he did specifically evolves as well. >> police interrogators -- i say this not from experience -- through interrogations, they say if a person gives them a story, they call that person back in a day or two later, and the person gives the same exact story, no changes, they are suspicious of that individual. the point being that, the idea you have alluded to, that over time, when people write an account, there are things that jar their memory, things that they remember this time or a point they put more emphasis on. the idea that an account written in the immediate aftermath is more truthful, i don't think that is a good question or revealing at all. the big question -- we will get back to this at the end because it is a big question, and i'm sorry chris could not be in our class the following thursday because many said, i don't know if there is such thing as truth. they had not gone to the postmodernism camp, but i want to be specific here, then john, you can jump in. was there a bayonet charge at the 20th maine and did chamberlain order it? >> first thing i will say is most of us familiar with the story because of the way it is novel "thein the killer angels" in the film "gettysburg," and what that does is it portrays this moment in the heat of the fighting when they are on the verge of collapse. the confederates are getting ready to renew their assault, and in a moment of divine inspiration, joshua chamberlain, as portrayed by jeff daniels, brings all of his company commanders together, his aeutenants together, there is lull in the fighting so you can hear everything he is saying, the crescendo dies down, and chamberlain gives this well choreographed and orchestrated mainever that the 20th will swing down the slopes, the left lane will come into alignment with the right and they are charging down the hill and drive the confederates back. the film "gettysburg" is portrayed as this will orchestrated thing. when you read the accounts of the men who were there, the men e, who remembers there who remembers is not one individual that moment in the same way. this bayonet charge is a perfect example. chamberlain and his initial report says, i ordered the charge. i ordered the charge. fast forward a few years later. it is now the early 1880's, and the 90 states government is creating the official records of the war of the rebellion, 127 volume series, primary sources on the battle. reports, dispatches, memos, you name it. i have some of them over there. they are compiling these reports from the battle of gettysburg. they find that chamberlain's is missing so they have him write it from memory and that is the version that is published in the official record come not the original 1863 report, it is joshua chamberlain in the 1880's trying to remember what he wrote in that initial report. you will notice differences. in the initial chamberlain in the 1880's trying to remember what he wrote in that reports. you will notice differences. in the original report, he says, i ordered the charge. in that report, he had no idea the name of the hill he fought on. he called a rocky hail. in the 1880's report that he redid, he says that he ordered the bayonet. he does not say he ordered the charge. he refers to the hill as little round top. the second-in-command, he is commending the left wing of the regiment, and he is in many ways the anti-joshua chamberlain, he had a different understanding of the war, he did not find anything noble about the conflict, it was just something he was compelled to do because it was the right thing to do, and he would write, i got no order from chamberlain, i did not hear had the first thing he notes, he looked to his right, he sees the colors going down the hill and he is like, i guess that is what we are going to do. that is what happened. the idea that it was this well orchestrated thing, no. virtually everyone agrees the regiment advanced and charged down the hill. but no one remembers that moment the same way. >> what did oates say about the charge and its impact, if it had an impact at all? oates, he will remember the battle for a variety of reasons. his brother is killed on the hill. oates will say at the time they advanced, he had made the decision to retreat. he was getting ready to pull back. he knew he was not making headway, so he was saying, ready to fall back anyways. he would later say, the impact of the charge, that his men ran like a herd of wild cattle. oates is physically and emotionally spent, he passes out. so oates will say the charge happened, but that was not the point of the story. he was already pulling back. >> one of the people watching asks, when was the original report if it was missing? >> i want to say a copy was found -- i believe a copy was found in the main state archives in new england. eventually, a supplement to the official report, and i believe his original report may have been republished, but don't quote me on that. i believe a copy was forwarded to the governor of maine in 1863 and it was filed in the state archives and that is how we got the original reports. >> i like to play devil's advocate. pete usually does but i will try this time. we have this focus on chamberlain. who do you think is forgotten about on little round top the most for their actions work? >> that is a tough question. for a lot of the gettysburg battle buffs, we try to pick out the real hero of little round top. was it warren, was it chamberlain, was it patrick o'rourke? it is kind of a reductionist thing, taking something complex , trying to boil it down to it was this guy, this is the man. more often than not, what i find compelling are the individual soldiers that make up the ranks of the 20th maine or adf -- or the 83rd pennsylvania. the rank-and-file individuals combed the hill for 90 minutes stress innceivable these inconceivable moments. i think the rank-and-file, how they remembered the battle. >> i am right there with you. i have always been somewhat distressed when it comes to any battle and they want to -- people want to extract a moment from that battle in which all the events hinged upon, which is incredibly reductionist. it leads me to ask chris something that i have sensed from my students, certainly i have sensed when i have given talks, and that is a backlash against chamberlain. can you talk to was about, what is this backlash? why is it happening? >> i think there are two backlashes. what happens at the end of his life in the 1910s and more recently following the movie the renaissance of chamberlain. he was a relatively unknown figure, he was not the joshua chamberlain we know today for most of the 20th century, he was -- he kind of receded into the pack and became a footnote. i don't know if this is something that is the american thing to do, when anybody gets too high, we want to drag them down a little bit. or maybe we become a bit skeptical of our heroes, so we want to find some dirt on them, make them human maybe. i want to say there is this kind of backlash against chamberlain and i think that has nothing to do with joshua chamberlain. i think it has more to do with people in my position or your position who see this focus on this one guy and it's one moment in the battle, all of this intellectual energy is spent talking about joshua chamberlain and the 20th maine, meanwhile, there are moments of cowardice and desperation and bravery and ignorance and stupidity across the battlefield that are just as compelling and just as significant as what joshua chamberlain and the 20th maine did. sometimes, i think we have this habit of trying to course correct. one individual monopolizes the story too much, so we pull away from them and sometimes we pull too far away. >> i think it has a lot to do with the lost cause. no one has any issues in focusing on the mistakes at cemetery hill and jackson's absence. no one has reservations to elevate james longstreet as the person who if only lee had listened to him, things would have turned out differently. but i think what bothers those of the lost cause, they see in chamberlain a man who upheld higher ideas about the union cause. he was no abolitionist, but he came to understand, as others did in the army of the potomac, that union and emancipation were inseparable. what strikes me is the resistance to chamberlain is much of what you have said, but i think it speaks to what persists as an interpretive challenge that your colleagues, that john and i face, and that is that the battle of gettysburg is not the battle that we lost, it is the battle that the army of the potomac won, the battle in which they were able to redeem themselves. men died for that, they knew what they were dying for. there were not trying to make this war of saint on the northern side and sinners on the southern side, but i'm shocked by the struggle and challenge that we have in getting people to understand that high ideas did matter to men on both sides, both sides. that the cause for union, joshua chamberlain was a believer in that and he was such an eloquent spokesperson for that cause. >> i love gettysburg, i have been to gettysburg, but i did my seasonal work on battlefields of virginia. a little disagreement with chris, joshua chamberlain, he would probably have argued, i believe, that it was what he did during the last two weeks of the war that were the most important things he ever did. he wrote a book about it. he did not write a book about little round top. he wrote a book about the passing of the armies, and he goes from the lewis farmhouse to the road and once again, chamberlain is at the center of those battles. he was truly remarkable. he saved the fifth corps at the battle of white oak road not to , mention his role at the surrender at appomattox. gettysburg, certainly was something that chamberlain drew pride from and as he pointed out, he was territorial about in terms of, this is my sites, this is my battle, and i want people to understand it my way, but we should not forget what he did during those last few weeks of the war. passing of the armies i think is a great book. >> there was a book that came out that talks about the myth of little round top, how important it was, we have a question here, and tom says i would like to hear your opinions on what rebels would have done if they would have taken it, it seems a small platform, but the union would be able to retake it. was it really an area of significance? or something that came later through later through the eyes of the veterans? >> i'm not a strategist. the hill is important. george meade says it. warren says it. there is no getting around that. the hill is significant. if the confederates are able on july 2 to capture little round top, able to gain a significant gain on cemetery hill or cemetery ridge and union troops can't drive them off, victory is untenable. there is danger in blowing the story of little round top out of reasonable proportion. it was one part of a larger battle. if the confederates had taken the hill, i have no idea what would have happened. history is full of so many contingencies where one thing is dependent on the other. one event hinged upon this other event. i think the artillery platform on little round top, we make too much of that. if confederates take little round top and hold it, the vote -- the road is off-limits to the union army. the other road becomes untenable, and that is a significant roadway. if the confederates get the hill, the union is going to have to respond. whether they would have been able to drive the confederates off, i have no idea. whether the confederates after they have fought for 90 minutes on this terrain would have had the ability to hold the terrain, i have no idea. i think a more interesting question is why did certain participants feel the way they did? what was it that they thought about little round top or about that place in the story about the battle of gettysburg? that is to me, a more interesting question than trying to divine what would have happened had the confederates taken the hill. if confederates are able to take any part of the union at that line and they are able to hold it, it is a dire situation. >> i find it an interesting story that you told me at little round top, it involves the rock wall, joshua chamberlain's frustration about that. can you tell us about how the historic landscape, how chamberlain wanted it to be remembered? >> it goes back to little round top as the defining moment in chamberlain's life. i agree with you, the last few weeks are important, he writes this massive tome about the last month, but it is little round top that joshua chamberlain petitions to get the medal of honor for. it is little round top that he visits time and time again. it is little round top that he guards jealously. chamberlain understood as well as anyone the power of place. he has this often quoted line about gettysburg being this place of souls and irreverent men and women from afar, generations shall come here, i butchered that quote, but it is well known. i think that is how we understand little round top. that is where his story is going to be told. that is where his life is going to be remembered. he wants to make sure that that hill speaks for him. if you go there today, there is this monument, this little rocky shelf just southeast from the main summit of little round top and that is where the 20th maine fights. they are on the hill maybe five minutes before confederates attack. they do not have time to entrench, so they are going to use whatever natural protection they can find on the hillside. the undulations in the ground, boulders, trees, that is their only protection. they fight for 90 minutes. they drive the confederates back. the war goes on and gettysburg becomes a preserved landscape. first by the gettys field -- gettysburg memorial association, then by the united states government. the agency that managed the battlefield park had enormous challenges in the story of the wall. chamberlain and his men had no protection, no walls. after the fighting is over, they are sent to big round top, then reinforcements move and occupy that stretch of little round top. they have no idea that there is not going to be anymore fighting, they have no idea what it's going to happen next. they just do what soldiers do, they stack up and build defensive walls, the block walls that we see today. those block walls were a source of incredible consternation to joshua chamberlain because he did not want americans in the 1890's or 1990's, he did not want americans going to that spur and thinking his men had time to build rocks. that they had any protection to hide behind. he wanted to convey the idea that for the men of the 20th maine, this is a standup fight. he would petition the park management, he would petition them time and again to have those walls removed, not to have them taken off, to convey this impression that his men did not have anything like that. the head of the war department commission was a man by the name of john paige nicholson and nicholson was getting letters from joshua chamberlain up until the last year of his life, and chamberlain trying to use leverage he had to get the commission to move those walls. nicholson would write to one of his colleagues, having to say no to joshua chamberlain was one of the great trials of his life. what ended up happening was the war department created a tablet that was no bigger than my laptop, it may be a little bit bigger, that sits along the avenue and it says basically, these walls were built for defense. and it is the only marker or memorial that i know of in the park whose sole function is to correct a misconception. joshua chamberlain hated those walls. he was so protective, he had to remove it. of course it is still there today. >> do we have any questions -- we have any questions? i was going to have chris comment on a few books before we leave. >> you can have him comment. i will see what we got. >> joshua chamberlain's correspondence is two or three different volumes. this is one. >> he has forgotten more about that than i will ever know. a couple of wonderful books. that one does a great job. firm ye boys"stand from maine." >> who published that? >> it you to be thomas publications. i don't believe they still do it but it is still available. >> i think this is available as well. he also did a brilliant book, is not called -- i don't remember the title. i hope you will be able to pull it out. he takes a number of case studies. it is a wide range of things. it is exceedingly well done. it is sort of various myths. it is really well done. this is the other book. i don't know if you have feelings about this. do you know this? >> that is a wonderful book. it is chamberlain's letters post war, but so much of what he writes goes back to the american civil war. there is a fantastic letter in that book that chamberlain writes i want to say in 1892 or 1893 to alexander webb and they have this collegial relationship. chamberlain desperately wanted a medal of honor, so he wrote to webb asking, how do i get one of these things? [laughter] >> i did not know that chamberlain had petitioned for a medal of honor. i think i'm going to petition for a pulitzer prize. that is the only way i would get it. >> here is the thing with chamberlain about the medal of honor. he desperately wanted it, he did not necessarily want people to know how desperately he wanted it, and he wanted to convey the impression that he felt he deserved it, but he was not asking for it. kind of washingtonian, almost. in the letter he talks about how he needs witnesses to testify to his heroics. he says, unfortunately for me, speak of anyn active mind is a victim of the environment. >> here is the biography i mentioned earlier. she cowrote this book with her husband. both happen to be from indianapolis. i remember the conversations they had with chamberlain's granddaughter and the artifact she gave and they -- have you been up to chamberlain's house? what struck me was the gift that he gave his wife. their marriage was strained after the war, in part because he could not stop living the war. he is like a high school football player, the glory days, you just cannot get beyond that. i will never forget looking at the bracelet that he had custom-made for his wife, and every bracket on that bracelet was the name of one of the battles that chamberlain fought in. he might as well have given her a bowling ball. >> creek me if i am -- correct me if i am wrong, but the centers down is like the maltese cross. >> another letter about the jewelry -- is to his wife, he is writing about strong vincent and how the officers had come together and pooled their money to buy a pendant and it had small diamonds around it. and i believe you could open it up, i assume to put a picture in there, and then of course they gave it to his widow, but the letter is amazing because he writes about taking that pendant and waving it in front of himself. and that it almost put him in this hypnotized state and he felt a deep sense of melancholy and connection. i am very moved by the last line in which he reminded his wife, saying he and his fellow officers had not succumbed to savagery, that they had been able to retain a sense of being civilized and decent and christian men. those letters, if you can piece them together, because they are published in different accounts, it is quite remarkable. then you get out on the battlefield -- i won't get into details about all the things i got wrong out there. chris spent some time, a very encouraging coach, and i think he got a set. i always pick up some new things. it is true that with his current position, he is chief of interpretation. he is responsible for getting his team prepared and ready to go out into the field. like any good officer, he is often behind the lines. this is a shame because he is a hell of an interpreter. i hope chris, you will make an appearance from time to time and out on the field where you belong. >> absolutely. i do have one question before we wrap up and it is from john tracy. he is on here watching and he says do you see any individuals from other regiments on the round top pushing back against chamberlain or are they content with the increased profile of the location? >> even within the 20th maine, there are people that push back. oliver wilcox norton is another example of that. there is an interesting correspondence about chamberlain. speare starts to refer to chamberlain's egotism and shares this one story with norton and it was at college commencement when chamberlain was present. all the students and faculty are sitting in the auditorium , and chamberlain walks in and he goes down the center of the aisle and speare and stevens turn and whispered to each other . and they say in a hushed tone, there goes the man that took little round top, and chamberlain heard this and he stopped, turns to students and says something to the effect of, yes, i took it and held it too. speare overheard this and wrote to norton, it seemed as though chamberlain was spewing from the dead. he should have stopped and said no that the title belong to st rawn. >> that is a great way to end. >> each week, archival film from public issues. >> have you ever asked yourself this question? why do postal clerks get into session -- indigestion? there are a lot of reasons. >> i guess that is logical, but that is not the reason. -- it is from trying to read the american hand. city's dillof the cannot be read. >> oak park. >> orc would. >> tuscaloosa. mean, you see what you this letter might as will be carved out of wood. >> just try this problem on for size. >> i got one from springfield. ♪ >> i want you to know that i have been waiting for this letter for a week. >> you are angry and you have a right to be -- there are many cities with identical names. >> what good does it do to send a letter my way? ♪ >> zip code is bringing the mail under control. it is as up-to-date as the computer, as timely as the zip code scanner, reading zip codes and sorting the mail. it is a success. to make zip code work, you must use it. zipmber, only you can put in the postal system. ladies and gentlemen, the united states. the honorable lawrence f o'brien. >> one way we can measure the success of our zip code program is by the number of foreign countries who send us postal specialists to determine how much of it is adoptable for their own purposes. they come because of a simple fact. zip code works. it works for all who use the males. watch archival films on public affairs in their entirety on our weekly series, real america. herey at 4:00 p.m. eastern on american history. -- american history tv. next, on "lectures in history", mary ellen pethel and jennifer duck of belmont university teach a class on the history of presidential campaign advertising, from the print and cartoon ads of the 19th century to the television commercials of the mid-20th century, to the internet and social media content of today. belmont university is located in nashville, tennessee. the class took place one week prior to the school hosting a presidential debate. >> hello, everyone. glad to have you for democracy, media and the public sphere. first a shout out to begin our class, as we have done before. can i have natalie and ryan here, please? ok. natalie and ryan. we are giving you a special shout out to start class.

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