The fellow in the photo above looks like a distinguished figure -- a bank president, perhaps, or a judge, a governor, maybe a college professor. He is a figure of great dignity and gravitas, indeed.

Well, he was a college professor and a governor (of Maine), in fact, but that’s the least of his story. The old fellow here is Brevet Major General Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain, hero of Gettysburg, one of America’s premier military heroes, a man who may have single-handedly saved the Union on a fateful day in 1863.