FDR vs. the 20th Maine

On the afternoon of July Second, 1863, the 20^th Maine Infantry Regiment was given an extraordinarily daunting assignment.  Positioned on a rocky hill called Little Round Top, they represented the absolute far left flank of the Union line at Gettysburg.  They were tasked with holding that real estate against anything the Confederacy could throw at them.  If the 20^th Maine collapsed, the entire Union line would collapse.  Needless to say, the ensuing battle was fierce.  The 20^th Maine repulsed numerous Confederate attacks, sustaining heavy losses in the process.  Ammunition was running low, and the beleaguered regiment was hanging on by its fingernails.

            This is where Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes in.  He once said “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!”  That’s all well and good for a while, but what do you do when that’s not enough?  We all have limits.  What should you do when you reach them?

            Such was the 20^th Maine’s predicament.  They were placed at the end of their rope when they were told that the line stopped with them.  Any deviance, any movement, any sway on their part would spell disaster for the cause of freedom in Gettysburg Pennsylvania.  When they stood there, bloodied and unable to shoot back at the enemy, holding on was not going to be enough anymore.  If they simply held on, they would be defeated.

            Here, their commanding officer, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, realized that tying a not and hanging on isn’t good enough anymore.  He understood something counter-intuitive.  Facing imminent death gives you certain freedoms.  If you’re going to die, why bother trying to protect yourself?  He had the vision to see that the worst kind of peril is the window for the greatest of audacity.  Knowing that his men would be slaughtered if they stayed, and knowing the enemy to be human, Colonel Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge down the hill.

            The bold plan succeeded.  The Confederate forces broke and fled in a route before the onslaught of the impossible.  The line held, and the Union army went on to win a decisive victory in Gettysburg Pennsylvania. 

            Their audacity demonstrates that, when no longer to hold on to the end of your rope, there is a store of energy seldom tapped.  When they were beyond their capacity, they realized that the enemy was as well.  The difference between utter destruction and decisive victory was the decision to spend their seemingly dying energy to succeed, rather than to fail. In short, Colonel Chamberlain understood that  holding on to the end of the rope only works if you’re willing to climb it when you can’t hold on any longer.