Becoming A Hell of a Regiment: The Twentieth Maine at Fredericksburg in History and Memory
November 1 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
A Talk and Walking Tour with Jared Peatman
Though famous for its actions at Gettysburg, the Twentieth Maine’s first major battle – and the one that set it up to earn glory seven months later – was Fredericksburg. Fifty years later, differing interpretations of that same battle turned former comrades Joshua Chamberlain and Ellis Spear into enemies, and provided much fodder for today’s anti-Chamberlain crowd.
Join us November 1, 2026, first at the CVBT office as Jared Peatman, author of the recently-released A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine, reveals the dynamics of the Twentieth Maine on the eve of the Battle of Fredericksburg, the impact of the great battle on the unit, and then the controversies that arose with Joshua Chamberlain’s January 1913 account “My Story of Fredericksburg.” Then, we’ll pick up with the tour portion of the program and follow in the footsteps of the Twentieth Maine from December 13-16, 1862, as they attacked Marye’s Heights on December 13-14 before acting as part of the army’s rearguard on December 15-16.
Jared Peatman is a graduate of Gettysburg College with a master’s degree from Virginia Tech and Ph.D. from Texas A&M. Jared’s first book was The Long Shadow of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (2013). For that project he was named the Organization of American Historians and Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission Doctoral Fellow and received the Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize for the best work on Abraham Lincoln or the Civil War. His second book, A Hell of a Regiment: To Gettysburg and Beyond with the Twentieth Maine,was published by Stackpole Books in 2026.
In his day job Jared provides training events that use history as a metaphor to examine current leadership and performance challenges. He is the founder and president of Four Score Consulting and a Senior Fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. He has delivered over 1,000 leadership seminars at sites including Gettysburg, Mount Vernon, President Lincoln’s Cottage, Jamestown, Valley Forge, the Alamo, Waterloo, and many more.
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