Fanny & Joshua: The Enigmatic Lives of Frances Caroline Adams and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

14. "We Have Looked Our Sorrows Fairly in the Face"

CHAPTER 14 We Have Looked Our Sorrows Fairly in the Face" C hamberlain continued to receive offers in early 1866 to lecture and deliver addresses about the war and on behalf of the soldiers and their families. He also continued to reflect, not only on his personal experiences and trials, but on those of all who participated in the war, North and South. While Chamberlain followed national politics with great interest, nearer to home, Maine politicians showed great interest in him. By the first of the year, he knew that many in the Maine Republican party saw him as their next candidate for governor. In the first weeks of the new year, Lawrence was preparing a speech to deliver in February before a gathering of veterans in Philadelphia that would establish a new organization, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States [MOLLUS]. Recuperating from his latest surgery during Bowdoin's winter break, he also began to write his history of the 5th Corps. As they often would in the future, the family vacated the house in order to give Lawrence the quiet he needed to write. Fanny made a short visit to friends and family in New York City, the first of several trips to the city that winter.1 ^ 176 On New Year's Day, fearing that her son was trying to do too much, and dismayed that he was at home on his own, Mother Chamberlain wrote: "Are you still alone! I suppose you are pressed with business & considerably tensed beside— perhaps perplexed beside but I hope not—here I sit longing to write something to you, that will help sustain you under your cares & responsibilities how can I, one in your position I can only ask for you that wisdom wisdom which is so freely given You must feel your need of it—" Mother Chamberlain and Lawrence had been talking politics, and between her consideration of the foment over Reconstruction , and the influence of Lawrence's previous observations, his mother offered: / think this a very perplexing time politically—since the war I have been quite a politician—even studying all the political speeches thatfall in my way—I declare I find myself with Congress rather than Johnson for better have left the Slaves in bondage than set them at liberty & withhold protection from them now they must suffer unless they are protected from the rage or violence of their former masters and put in the right way of taking care of themselves—May be I dont understand all about it—but you do &I trust you are right.— Of Lawrence's possible candidacy for governor, she added: "While twould be most gratifying to me to see you in the chair of state I would not have you yield your conscientious convictions of right to gain any position earth can give. Be sure you are right—in sympathy with Heaven, I know all is well I have no fears on your account you have always been on the right side, & trust are now—" Several days later, Sae, an ambassador conveying the family's concern for Lawrence, came to Brunswick to visit until Fanny's return the next week.2 Sarah Brastow Chamberlain. In the dress she wore to her son's first inauguration. Additional insights to Chamberlain's thoughts and political inclinations can also be found in the MOLLUS speech over which he labored. In this address entitled "Loyalty," Chamberlain entreated his listeners to not only cherish their memories of loyal and costly devotion," but to "pledge hearts anew to the faith of freedom under the law; to perpetuate the ascendancy of immortal ideas over temporal interests and passions; to celebrate the enfranchisement of the People...." He optimistically asserted that, "...we know now what we are, and what we belong to, and what character is under this name of Country...What all this was for will be made manifest; what we shall be will appear."3 What the character of the country would be after the war, however, was a matter of passionate debate in early 1866. Though Republicans had a three to one majority in Congress, the party was far from united on the nature of Reconstruction . Radical Republicans, who had assumed that Lincoln's vice president and successor, Unionist Democrat Andrew Johnson, concurred that the Rebels must be punished, were, by the time Congress met in December 1865, enraged. By that time...