There comes a time in every person's life when a decision is required. And that decision, should you make it, will have a far-reaching effect on generations not yet born. Your example, your actions, even one decision can literally change the world.
One decision can literally change the world.
July second, eighteen sixty three, a school teacher from Maine was in the fight of his life. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, formerly a professor or rhetoric from Bowdoin College, currently a thirty-four-year-old colonel in the union army. The place is Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Chamberlain's troops were facing the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert Lee. After five bloody attacks from the Rebels, Chamberlain's troops could not hold them off any longer.
More than half his regiment was dead, and many of the remaining soldiers were wounded. He was outnumbered more than five to one, and the last skirmish had taken place on both sides of the wall, face-to-face. He did not know how his troops had pushed the Rebels back down the hill. He found out later his men had been punching the enemy with their fists.
A quick survey told him there were less than two bullets per man remaining. For all intents and purposes his troops, the Twentieth Main was out of ammunition. He could see the attackers were preparing for a final assault. Looking at what seemed to be certain death, Chamberlain's officers advised retreat.
Chamberlain did not respond. He was thinking that the cost of staying where he was would be the same as running away.
His brother screamed at him to 'Give an order."
And so he did. Chamberlain he ordered his troops to 'fix bayonets!' His men thought he was crazy.
Then someone down the line yelled,"'They're coming!"
Chamberlain yelled "Fix bayonets, and Charge!" Chamberlain drew his sword, jumped on top of the wall and with the enemy less than 50 yards away, shouted "Charge!"
The men of the Twentieth Maine Regiment, the pride of the Army of the Potomac, poured over the wall and followed the schoolteacher into history.
The Confederate troop, upon seeing the leader of the opposition climb the wall, stopped unsure what was happening. When Chamberlain pointed his sword at them and yelled "Charge!" they turned and ran. Many threw down loaded weapons. They were sure these must be reinforcements. It never occurred to them that a beaten regiment would charge.
In less than ten minutes, the ragged group under Chamberlain's command, without ammunition, captured the entire regiments of the Fifteenth Alabama and the Forty-seventh Alabama, more than four hundred men. It all happened because one man made a decision to charge.
And one decision that you make, can literally change the world.
You might be thinking that Colonel Joshua Chamberlain changed the outcome of only one small part of the battle. Consider this.
It was an accepted as fact, that at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Union was losing badly. Confederate troops had taken Fort Sumter, routed the Union army at Manassas. Lee had won major victories at Richmond in the Battles of the Seven days and again at Manassas in the Second Battle of Bull Run. The South had won at Chancellorsville and crushed General Burnside at Fredericksburg.
Had the south been victorious at Gettysburg, historians agree that the war would have been over by the end of the summer. The Confederate States of America were one victory away from winning the war. But they did not win.
The schoolteacher from Maine was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his decision at Little Round Top. His commanding officers determined that the actions of this one man saved the Union army from certain destruction. His decision had turned the tide of the battle. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain turned the tide of the war.
If the South had won there would be no America as we have today. There would have been two possibly three countries existing in our place. The world would not have a country beg enough and strong enough to feed the other nations of the world. There would be no superpower available to defend weaker countries against those who would limit their freedom.
When Hitler swept across Europe, when Hirohito invaded the islands of the Pacific, when Saddam Hussein's armies rolled into Kuwait, a United States of America was there to stop them. We were there because of one man, with his back to the wall, a man whose only option appeared to be to retreat. The world as it exists today is largely the result of a decision to charge—made by a schoolteacher over a hundred years ago.
Joshua Chamberlain made a decision that changed the world but it also held personal rewards. He led successful campaigns until the end of the war. He was cited four separate times for bravery in action and was promoted by special order of Ulysses S. Grant to brigadier general for heroism at Petersburg. A few months later for heroism at Five Forks, he was promoted to Major General.
From all Union Officers, President Lincoln chose Chamberlain to have the honor of accepting the Confederate surrender at Appomattox. There he stunned the world with a show of forgiveness and respect as he ordered his troops to attention, saluting General Robert E Lee and his army.
Back home in Maine, Chamberlain was elected governor in what is, to this day, the largest majority in the history of the state. He was reelected three times until he finally stepped down and accepted the position of president of Bowdoin College.
An interesting benefit of a person's decision to charge is the presence of a hedge of thorns. Mentioned in the Bible, a hedge of thorns is divine protection placed upon the person who is destined to make a difference. Until you have accomplished what you were put here to do, you will not, you cannot be harmed. Joshua Chamberlain, on that hill in Pennsylvania, with his decision not yet made and all his victories before him, was wrapped in the protection of a hedge of thorns.
I have a copy of the contents of a letter addressed to the Honorable Governor Joshua L. Chamberlain. It arrived at the statehouse in Maine, several years after the war.
Dear Sir:
I want to tell you of a little passage in the Battle of Round Top, Gettysburg, concerning you and me, which I am now glad of. Twice in that fight I had your life in my hands. I got a safe place between two rocks, and drew bead fair and square on you. You were standing in the open behind the center of your line, full exposed. I knew your rank by your uniform and actions, and I thought it a mighty good thing to put you out of the way. I rested my gun on the rock and took steady aim. I started to pull the trigger, but some queer notion stopped me. Then I got ashamed of my weakness and went through the same motions again. I had you, perfectly certain. But that same queer something shut right down on me. I couldn't pull the trigger, and gave it up---that is, your life. I am glad of it now, and hope you are.
Yours truly,
A member of the Fifteenth Alabama
Our story, our circumstances may not be as dramatic as those of Joshua Chamberlain, but the stakes are exactly the same. There comes a time in every person's life when a decision is required. And that decision, should we make it, will have a far-reaching effect on generations yet unborn. One decision that we make will literally change the world.
A decision to charge………so do it. Change your life. Charge…………..
Sweat the Small Stuff
Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It's the small stuff that will get you.
A few years ago, a squirrel climbed onto the Metro-North Railroad power lines near New York City. He set off an electrical surge, which weakened an overhead bracket. The bracket allowed a wire to dangle toward the tracks. The wire tangled in a train that tore down all the lines. As a result, forty-seven thousand commuters were stranded in Manhattan for hours that evening.
Remember the Hubble Space Telescope? It was conceived in 1946 and cost $2.5 billion to produce. Yet when it was launched into orbit, NASA discovered that a particular lens had been ground 1/1000th of an inch less than it should have been. That "little thing" until it was repaired by astronauts, rendered the most expensive telescope in history no better than a good one on the ground.
Then there was Napoleon: a tiny part of the battle became immensely important to Napoleon when he defeated Wellington at Waterloo. But wasn't Waterloo Napoleon's greatest defeat?
On the eighteenth of June 1815, Napoleon did indeed suffer his greatest defeat---an unmitigated disaster---at Waterloo. But that was only after he had won!
Napoleon had brilliantly outmaneuvered Wellington's 77,000 men---this in addition to the more than 100,000 Prussians nearby. Together, those armies easily outnumbered Napoleon's 76,000, but when he got in between them, Napoleon prevented the two from combining. He had already beaten the Prussians two days before, so he detached a part of his force to hold them at bay while pointing the rest of his army toward Wellington and the British.
Napoleon began the battle at a bit after eleven in the morning with an artillery barrage and an initial assault against the British right flank. Pushing back and forth most of the day, at one point Napoleon watched from a hillside as his troops pushed past Wellington's lines, capturing almost all of the 160 British cannons.
Muzzle-loading cannons were packed with black gunpowder, wadding, and a projectile of some sort. The touchhole of the cannon was then contacted with a flaming torch, which ignited the powder and fired the cannon.
It was customary in those days for several of the troops to carry small metal rods---nails---with them in the event they overran the enemy's guns. The metal rods were then hammered into the cannon's touchhole, rendering it useless. When Napoleon's men overran Wellington's position---and his cannons---it became immediately apparent that there were no spikes among his troops. As Napoleon screamed from the hilltop for the cannons to be destroyed, he watched Wellington's men retake the guns and turn them on their attackers. Napoleon was defeated…and all for lack of a fistful of nails.
· Sacajawea was the daughter of a Shoshone.
· Sacagawea was born in the eastern part of what is now the state of Idaho. Her people, the Lemhi Shoshone, or Snake People, spent much of the year traveling in small groups.
· When Sacagawea was around 10 years old, her group was camped near the three forks of the Missouri River. Suddenly, a band of Hidatsa attacked. The Shoshone bows and arrows were useless against the Hidatsa's rifles. Sacagawea and others were captured and taken back to the Hidatsa villages near present-day Stanton, North Dakota.
· Within a few years of arriving at the Hidatsa village, Sacagawea was sold or lost in a gambling wager to Toussaint Charbonneau, a French-Canadian trader. The marriage was not a love match. Charbonneau had the typical trader's attitude toward Indian women--they were very good workers.
· Sacajawea was about 16 years old when she and her husband, a French-Canadian trapper named Toussaint Charbonneau, joined the group of explorers.
· Sacajawea was pregnant at the time with her first child.
· During the trip, she gave birth to a son. On February 11th, 1805, Sacagawea went into a long, difficult labor. She gave birth to a boy, whom Charbonneau named Jean Baptiste. She called him Pomp, meaning 'first born' in Shoshone.
· When the Corps of Discovery encountered Shoshone Indians, Sacajawea discovered that their leader was her brother, Cameahwait. Sacagawea learned that most of her family were dead. Only two brothers and her oldest sister's child remained.
· Lewis and Clark purchased horses from the Shoshones. They used the horses to cross the Rocky Mountains.
· Sacajawea contributed to the success of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by serving as an interpreter, finding edible plants, and saving important documents and supplies when a boat capsized.
