50 Fun Facts About The Killer Angels

Which space Western TV series did Joss Whedon create after reading Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels?

Firefly follows veterans of the losing side of a civil war as they scrape a living on a frontier in space, an echo of the years after the American one.

In The Killer Angels, what does Chamberlain order when the 20th Maine runs low on ammunition on Little Round Top?

A bayonet charge down the hill routs the attackers and takes five hundred prisoners, though the day costs the regiment nearly half its men.

Which actor played Colonel Joshua Chamberlain in Gettysburg, the 1993 film of The Killer Angels?

Jeff Daniels played the Maine colonel in a film that lifts much of its dialogue directly from the book.

Which literary award did The Killer Angels win in 1975, despite drawing little attention from reviewers?

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction went to a manuscript that fifteen publishers had rejected before a small independent house agreed to print it.

Arthur Fremantle, who watches the battle from Longstreet's side in The Killer Angels, is an officer from which country?

England is home to his regiment, the Coldstream Guards, and Fremantle hopes his country will ally itself with the Confederacy he so admires.

In The Killer Angels, what is Chamberlain authorized to do to Second Maine mutineers who refuse to fight?

Shoot them, says the order from the army's new commander, but Chamberlain feeds the men, hears their grievances and talks all but six into fighting.

A speech from which Shakespeare play, recited by the young Chamberlain, gives The Killer Angels its title?

Hamlet supplies the speech likening man in action to an angel, and Chamberlain turned the idea into a school oration called Man, the Killer Angel.

Which documentary maker credits The Killer Angels with sparking his interest in the American Civil War?

Ken Burns went on to make the PBS series The Civil War, and he turns up in the 1993 film of the book as an aide to a Union general.

Before commanding the 20th Maine in The Killer Angels, Joshua Chamberlain earned his living in which civilian job?

College professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin was his trade, and he addresses the mutineers in the calm manner he once used on rebellious students.

George Pickett, the perfumed, long-haired general of The Killer Angels, graduated where in his West Point class?

At the very bottom of 59 cadets is where he finished in 1846, yet Longstreet trusts him as a fighter who can be relied upon.

Which character, an actor by trade, opens The Killer Angels by scouting the Union army as Longstreet's spy?

Harrison rides in after dark with news that the Union army is far closer than headquarters believed, and Lee has to move on a spy's word.

Which Union cavalry general spots the Confederates first and seizes the high ground at Gettysburg in The Killer Angels?

John Buford, a Kentucky-born veteran of the Indian wars, has schooled his troopers to dig in and hold, which buys time for the infantry to come up.

Which Union general brings up infantry to relieve the cavalry in The Killer Angels, only to be shot dead that morning?

John Reynolds is killed while placing his troops on the first day, and that night the cavalry commander tells the dead general that they held the ground.

In The Killer Angels, the dying Lewis Armistead asks to send a message to which old friend, a Union general?

Winfield Hancock commands the very line the charge is aimed at, and the dying man is told that his friend has been wounded too.

Which cavalry commander's long absence leaves Lee blind to Union movements in The Killer Angels, earning a stern rebuke?

J. E. B. Stuart offers to resign when he finally returns, but Lee will not court-martial him and says he is needed for the fight ahead.

Which general takes command of the Union army only days before the fighting in The Killer Angels?

George Meade is so new to the post that a rumour sweeps the marching column that the popular McClellan is back in charge instead.

Which brigadier, accused of cowardice by Stonewall Jackson, rides into Pickett's Charge in The Killer Angels?

Richard Garnett has an injured leg and cannot march, but he insists on going in on horseback to clear his name and is killed in the assault.

Which Confederate corps commander, newly back after losing a leg, fails to attack Cemetery Hill in The Killer Angels?

Richard Ewell defers to a subordinate, apologizes to Lee for being too careful, and so enrages one general that the man refuses to serve under him.

Which general begs Longstreet to let him go right, behind Big Round Top, in The Killer Angels?

John Bell Hood warns that attacking as ordered will cost him half his division, and Longstreet privately agrees but will not depart from Lee's orders.

In The Killer Angels, how is Lieutenant Tom Chamberlain of the 20th Maine related to Colonel Joshua Chamberlain?

His brother Tom is the younger of the two and newly made lieutenant, and Joshua agonizes over sending him to plug a gap in the firing line.

Buster Kilrain, the one major fictional character in The Killer Angels, lost his sergeant's stripes for doing what?

Striking an officer while drunk cost the white-haired private his rank, yet Chamberlain depends on the older man, who later saves his life on Little Round Top.

In The Killer Angels, Longstreet has grown withdrawn since losing whom to a fever the previous winter?

His children, three of them, died of the fever, and since then he no longer joins the poker games he used to love.

Which approach to battle does Longstreet urge on Lee throughout The Killer Angels, without ever persuading him?

Defensive warfare is his creed: take good ground between the enemy and the capital, then let the Union army wear itself out attacking.

In The Killer Angels, which ailment leaves the 56-year-old Robert E. Lee weary and unwell on the morning of battle?

Heart disease is showing its early signs in Lee, who is often weary yet hopes the coming battle will finish the war.

After Pickett's Charge is thrown back in The Killer Angels, what does a shaken Robert E. Lee order?

A retreat that same night is all that is left: of the thirteen colonels in Pickett's division, seven are dead and the other six wounded.

On the third day in The Killer Angels, Lee decides the Union line must be weakest at which point?

The center looks thin to Lee after the previous day's attacks on the flanks, so he sends fifteen thousand men at it across a mile of open ground.

When Fremantle assumes the war is about slavery in The Killer Angels, Confederate officers insist it is about what?

States' rights is their answer, and prisoners taken by Chamberlain's regiment later say the same, though the colonel is not convinced.

Which Irish song, sung by a tenor in the Confederate camp in The Killer Angels, reminds Armistead of a lost friendship?

Kathleen Mavourneen, a song of friends parting, takes him back to an evening in 1861 when he sang around a piano with a comrade who now wears blue.

In The Killer Angels, which landmark on Cemetery Ridge does Lewis Armistead reach before he is fatally hit?

A stone wall is the goal of the whole charge, and Armistead gets there with a leg wound, is hit again in the side and falls dying among the dead.

In The Killer Angels, whose dry reply to a recited Shakespeare speech gives Chamberlain the phrase 'killer angel'?

His father heard the boy recite and remarked that if man is an angel he must be a murdering one, and the remark became the title of a school speech.

The battle in The Killer Angels is fought around a small crossroads town in which Union state?

Pennsylvania is where Lee has marched to threaten the capital and force a decisive fight, and the armies collide at the road junction of Gettysburg.

Which actor played Robert E. Lee opposite Tom Berenger's Longstreet in the 1993 film of The Killer Angels?

Martin Sheen took the part of the Confederate commander, with Stephen Lang as Pickett and Sam Elliott as the Union cavalry general.

Which media mogul, whose company produced the 1993 film of The Killer Angels, appears in it as a Confederate colonel?

Ted Turner makes an uncredited appearance as Colonel Waller T. Patton, in a production first planned as a cable miniseries before he sent it to cinemas.

Before The Killer Angels, Michael Shaara first broke into print in 1950s magazines with stories in which genre?

Science fiction was how the future historical novelist got into print, around the years he also spent as an amateur boxer and a police officer.

Michael Shaara, author of The Killer Angels, left a novel called For Love of the Game about which sport?

Baseball is its subject: the story of an aging pitcher went unpublished in his lifetime, was found by his family and reached cinemas in 1999.

At which university did Michael Shaara teach literature and writing while working on The Killer Angels?

Florida State kept him on its faculty in Tallahassee until 1973, the years in which a family visit to the battlefield grew into the novel.

Which singer-songwriter recorded Dixieland, a 1999 bluegrass song voiced by Buster Kilrain of The Killer Angels?

Steve Earle put the song on his album The Mountain, giving the novel's invented Irish private a second life in music.

The Killer Angels helped restore the reputation of James Longstreet, long attacked by writers of which movement?

The Lost Cause writers, Jubal Early among them, made Longstreet their scapegoat from the 1870s, while Shaara drew on the general's own memoirs.

Which prequel to The Killer Angels did Jeff Shaara, son of the author Michael Shaara, go on to write?

Gods and Generals runs from 1858 to the eve of Gettysburg, and its 2003 film came from Ronald Maxwell, the director of the earlier movie.

Which Union force, some eighty thousand strong, pursues Lee north in the opening pages of The Killer Angels?

The Army of the Potomac turns north in late June to chase Lee's seventy thousand invaders, and the pursuit ends at Gettysburg.

Lee and Longstreet reminisce in The Killer Angels about which earlier war, fought alongside men now in Union blue?

The Mexican War of 1846 to 1848 saw them serve beside officers who, as Longstreet remarks, are now waiting for them up ahead.

On the march in The Killer Angels, Chamberlain recalls which Union defeat of the previous December, where he fought?

Fredericksburg was a victory for Lee's army, and the memory surfaces as Chamberlain's regiment covers a hundred miles in five days.

Joshua Chamberlain, hero of The Killer Angels, later presided over the surrender of Lee's infantry at which place?

Appomattox Court House is where he presided over the parade of Lee's infantry as they laid down their arms, less than two years after Little Round Top.

Lewis Armistead's nickname Lo, a joke about the shy widower in The Killer Angels, is short for which word?

Lothario means a seducer, which is the joke: friends gave the name to a courtly, bashful man with a firm sense of duty.

Which mocking nickname, pinned on him while he guarded Richmond, does Robert E. Lee loathe in The Killer Angels?

King of Spades was the gibe when he set his army digging to protect the Confederate capital, and in the book he still prefers to attack.

Which colonel posts the 20th Maine on Little Round Top in The Killer Angels and is mortally wounded there?

Strong Vincent, the new brigade commander, tells Chamberlain that his regiment is the end of the whole Union line and must hold at all costs.

In The Killer Angels, Robert E. Lee broke his oath to the Union because he could not fight against which home state?

Virginia comes first for Lee, who reflects through a sleepless night that he could never have taken up arms against his own people.

Which decoration did the real Joshua Chamberlain receive in 1893 for the stand dramatized in The Killer Angels?

The Medal of Honor reached him thirty years after the battle, and he died in 1914 of complications from a later wound received at Petersburg.

After the war, the real Joshua Chamberlain of The Killer Angels won four elections in Maine to which office?

Governor of Maine for four one-year terms as a Republican, he then returned to Bowdoin as its president until 1883.

Which affectionate nickname did Robert E. Lee give James Longstreet, his second in command in The Killer Angels?

Old War Horse was Lee's name for the general his friends called Pete, a boyhood nickname that stuck for life.