BRUNSWICK, Maine — Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee turned Gettysburg into the grandest Civil War site in the North by invading Union territory in an in-your-face assault on Lincoln’s army. The tactic didn’t work, but that piece of rural Pennsylvania remains an awesome historical gut punch. It is not, however, the only significant Civil War site in the North.
It could be argued that the war started in this far North college town. Here Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” inspired by a sermon in a church that still stands at the corner of Maine Street and Bath Road: the First Parish Church.
Though historians disagree about whether Abraham Lincoln ever actually said, “So this is the little lady who started the great war” upon greeting her at the White House, her book had a nation-bending impact. Stowe’s novel about the realities of slavery helped jell abolitionist opinion leading up to the war.
Just across the street from that Brunswick church is the home of a young Bowdoin College professor who would become one of the greatest heroes of Gettysburg, repelling fierce Confederate assaults on Little Round Top. The Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain home is now a museum (207-729-6606, community.curtislibrary.com/pejepscot.htm) at 226 Maine St. The house escaped destruction in the 1980s and now has been smartly restored.
The shock for a visitor is that you might get there and find the museum closed. Check ahead. In this year, the 150th anniversary of the war’s start, the museum doesn’t open until May 24. It’s also closed Sundays and Mondays.
Those significant sites aside, heading south out of town, you’ll see how legacies aren’t always what one might hope. There stands the Uncle Tom’s Market, probably not the sort of commercial establishment Mrs. Stowe would have gloried in.
Then again, it’s only 10 minutes to Freeport, which is a shopper’s paradise, including the huge home of L.L. Bean. No worry about the hours there: Bean is always open (800-441-5713, llbean.com/llb/shop/1000001704).
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