When an author writes a book he has a message that he is trying to get across to the reader. This message is called a theme. In The Killer Angels Shaara’s theme was freedom for the slaves. The Northerners truly believed that the slaves deserved to be free, and their desire to set slaves free was the cause of the Civil War. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg, Colonel Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine gave a speech to a group of mutineers. He told them that the war in which they were fighting was unlike any war in history. The war in wh ....