"Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North's greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate...

"Two of the finest Union Army bands to emerge during the American Civil War were the Third Regiment Band of the New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry, recruited from Fisherville (now Penacook), New Hampshire, and its successor, the 2nd Brigade Band, 10th Army Corps. Both bands were stationed near Charleston, South Carolina, and led by Gustavus W. Ingalls, a native of Bristol, New Hampshire. In later years, historians began referring to these bands as the...