The 20th Maine was called to arms in April 1862. It drew its numbers from all over the state and no one country or town called it it's own; therefore, when they finally shipped out, there wasn't the great send off that the earlier regiments had received from their respective recruitment areas.
Many times it was the pride and joy of those moments of final farewell that could sustain a unit throughout the torture of being so far removed from loved ones. The unit received it's training from a veteran of the Battle of Bull Run; Colonel Adelbert Ames.
Colonel Adelbert Ames was a strict disciplinarian who,
in the early stages of the regiment, very rarely got the proper military demeanour of a crack unit.
Colonal Adelbert's men did learn. In the harshness of the Antietam Campaign, he began to see promise in his new charges; a glimmer of future greatness. At Shepardton's Ford, they fought in a rear guard action while in pursuit of Robert E. Lee's army of Northern Virginia. They were subsequently pinned down in front of the formidable defences at Frederickburg during the battle.
They will forever be known in the annals of military history for their heroic defence of "Little Round Top" during the Battle of Gettysburg. After being attacked several times by numerically superior forces, and after running out of ammunition, they fixed their bayonets and charged their rallying enemy. In addition to the casualties that the enemy had suffered, the 20th Maine captured about four hundred additional personnel . Prior to this they saved the position which was on the extreme left flank of the Union army. After the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th were involved in every major action that their army of the Potomac, now under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant, was involved in throughout the remainder of the war.
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