Maine Roads to Appomattox

“It is a time when every man should stand by his guns. And I am not scared or hurt enough yet to be willing to face to the rear when other men are marching to the front.” —Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

In Maine Roads to Gettysburg, Tom Huntington began the story of Maine in the Civil War, following soldiers from the towns and farms of the Pine Tree State to the bloody fields of Gettysburg, where Mainers like Joshua Chamberlain and Oliver Howard helped stem the Confederate tide in July 1863. Now Huntington tells the rest of the story and recounts the last two years of the war as it was fought by soldiers from Maine to defeat the rebellion, restore the Union, and end slavery.

Victorious but battered, Maine’s regiments marched south from Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863 and returned to Virginia to confront Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia once again. In one clash that November, Otis Roberts of the 6th Maine fought hand-to-hand with an enemy color-bearer, capturing the flag and earning the Medal of Honor—one of more than two dozen Mainers to receive the country’s highest recognition for valor during the Civil War.

When Ulysses Grant took command of all Union armies in early 1864, he ordered relentless attacks on the Confederates. At places like Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, Maine soldiers fought bravely and fell valiantly in brutal contests that left a trail of dead and wounded on the road to Richmond. During this campaign, Seldon Connor, colonel of the 19th Maine and future governor of the state, received a grievous wound at the Wilderness in May 1864.

When Grant’s campaign ended, the siege of Petersburg began: nine months of trench warfare outside Richmond. Incredibly, Charles Tilden, commander of the 16th Maine who had been captured during the regiment’s momentous stand at Gettysburg, was back with his unit, having escaped from Libby Prison six months before. Recaptured in August 1864, he escaped a day later. Near Petersburg, Joshua Chamberlain—hero of Gettysburg now leading a brigade—was shot through the hips, survived, and returned to accept the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, where he famously ordered a salute of the defeated Rebels.

Drawing from letters, regimental histories, published and unpublished memoirs, and other seldom-tapped sources, Tom Huntington weaves the stories of Maine men like Roberts, Connor, Tilden, and Chamberlain into the epic sweep of the Civil War. From Gettysburg to Appomattox—indeed from Portland to Petersburg, Augusta to Richmond, the Penobscot to the Rappahannock—Huntington captures the drama of the war’s final battles and the courage, grit, and determination of the soldiers who helped win them. Maine Roads to Appomattox is not only a Maine story, but also a deeply American one.