PORTLAND – A banner that hung at a reunion of the Civil War regiment from Maine that turned the tide at the Battle of Gettysburg is destined for a museum to be built at the Gettysburg National Military Park.

Joshua Chamberlain told veterans of the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment at the Oct. 3, 1889, reunion on Little Round Top at Gettysburg, Pa., that future generations would be inspired by what they had done there as young men.

“In great deeds something abides,” Chamberlain said in a speech considered his most famous. “On great fields something stays.”

Supporters of Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg bought the reunion banner from a dealer for $10,500 and donated it to the archives at the Gettysburg National Military Park. It will be put on display in the park’s museum when that facility opens in a few years.

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1 to July 3, 1863, marked a turning point in the war. It was the bloodiest battle of the war, with a total 51,000 soldiers left dead, wounded or missing on both sides.

Visitors to Gettysburg are hungry for details about Chamberlain and the 20th Maine.

They want to know where the Bowdoin College professor stood when his regiment fought off repeated Confederate assaults and saved the Union flank from being overrun, said Dru Anne Neil, spokeswoman for Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg. “The first question out of their mouth is, ‘Where was Chamberlain?'”

The American public has a strong emotional attachment to the story of the 20th Maine, agreed Katie Lawhon, a spokeswoman for the Gettysburg National Military Park.

She said people have a hard time relating to the big story of the three-day battle, so they are drawn to the “crystal clear” moments, such as the story of how the 20th Maine beat back repeated Confederate assaults on Little Round Top.

In 1889, veterans of the 20th Maine gathered for a reunion to place a battlefield marker. Lawhon said the public is also drawn to the story of that reunion.

“There is probably nothing more poignant than these veterans – and in all likelihood the families of those who did not survive the battle – coming together to dedicate the monument and tell their story to future generations,” she said.

Chamberlain, who was wounded five times during the war, rose to the rank of brigadier general.

He went on become a four-term Maine governor and president of Bowdoin College. In 1893, Congress honored him with the Medal of Honor for gallantry at Gettysburg.