Sunday, April 6, 2008

The Killer Angels, Chapter 2 - Michael Shaara


Chapter 2 - Chamberlain

Chapter 2 focuses on Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, trying to recover from sunstroke because he's from Maine and he walked too much the day before. Chamberlain has been informed that he is to take in a group of Mainers who are "mutineers." The mutineers had signed off for three years of service but their unit's enlistment had ended in two years. The 120 men still owe one year of volunteer service to the Army. Chamberlain is told to take them in, that he can do what he wants with them, and if they don't serve, he can shoot them. He knows he won't shoot them. He'd never be able to return to Maine if he did.

After they are brought to Chamberlain, he speaks to one of their number who has elected to speak for them, Joseph Bucklin. Bucklin represents an interesting counterpoint to the spy of the previous chapter:

...Bucklin said, "I'm tired, Colonel. You know what I mean? I'm tired. I've had all of this army and all of these officers, this damned Hooker and this god-damned idiot Meade, all of them, the whole bloody, lousy rotten mess of sick-brained potbellied scabheads that ain't fit to lead a johnny detail, aint fit to pour pee outen a boot with instructions on the heel. I'm tired. We are good men and we had our own good flag and these damned goddamned idiots use us like we was cows or dogs and even worse. We aint gonna win this war. We can't win no how because of these lame-brained bastards from West Point, these goddamned gentlemen, these officers. One one officer knew what he was doin: McClellan, and look what happened to him. I just as soon go home and let them damn Johnnies go home and the hell with it."

Putting aside the notion that McClellan actually knew what he was doing, Bucklin could represent all soldiers in all wars, not the least of which is the current conflict in Iraq. Soldiers get tired and they don't understand what they are fighting and those who are supposed to making the right decisions make the wrong ones. And the people who suffer for it are the soldiers themselves.

A little later in the chapter, though, Chamberlain ruminates on the answer to what they are fighting for:

...The faith itself was simple: he believed in the dignity of man... He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was a land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become. This was the first place on earth where the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had begun here and it would spread eventually all over the earth. But it has begun here. The fact of slavery upon this incredibly beautiful new clean earth was appalling, but even more than that was the horror of old Europe, the curse of nobility, which the South was transplanting to new soil. They were forming a new aristocracy, a new breed of glittering men, and Chamberlain had come to crush it. But he was fighting for the dignity of man and in that way he was fighting for himself. If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czech and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there was only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.

It is an extraordinary passage, especially through the light of today's politics. For one, the idea that Chamberlain's faith in American democracy is greater than his faith in God would run right up to those on the Christian Right who seek to tie those two things together. Secondly, the hatred of aristocracy as a rationale for fighting, even in an era in the U.S. where we seem to be trading presidential candidates from two families. And finally, the idea that the immigrants - the Poles, the Czechs, the English, the blacks etc. - can be just as American, and fight for the same ideals as those who are native born. And that they fight for the people, not the land.

Chamberlain eventually gets the men to fight, by expressing the sentiments he does above. And while the speech is described as inspirational, it is clearly the above passage that is the heart and soul of the chapter and Chamberlain's character. All but 6 of the mutineers decide to fight for Chamberlain's company, as they head out towards Gettysburg.

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