Joshua Chamberlain Gets The Bird

From Midnight in America: Darkness, Sleep and Dreams During the Civil War by Jonathan W. White

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"...some southerners were unable to concede that the war was over and that they had lost. One Kentucky Confederate later wrote that news of Lee's surrender 'came like midnight at midday. We never thought or dreamed of such a thing.' At Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9,1865, one Confederate officer told Union general Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, 'You may forgive us but we won't be forgiven. There is a rancor in our hearts' - here the officer apparently flipped Chamberlain the middle finger - 'which you little dream of. We hate you, sir.' The gallant man from Maine quietly replied, 'Oh, we don't mind much about dreams, nor about hate either. Those two lines of business are closed.'"

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