Lance J. Herdegen - The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory: The Black Hats from Bull Run to Appomattox and Thereafter

The record of the Iron Brigade will not be dismissed by time. Not that they were better soldiers or patriots than others, but because the fortunes and misfortunes of war placed them where the fight was the thickest.

O. B. Curtis, History of the Twenty-fourth Michigan of the Iron Brigade

The young generation can hardly realize that their modest neighbors are soldiers who have fought on more fields of battle than the Old Guard of Napoleon, and have stood fire in far greater firmness.

Rufus R. Dawes, Mauston, Wisconsin, 1885

Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana can say with truth that they have furnished the bravest soldiers of the war and they have had their shoulders to the wheel ever since the rebellion broke out. Their soldiers have never faltered [and] they were confident that Right would be vindicatedand the result proved they were not wrong.

Milwaukee Sentinel, July 1, 1865

Almost every war brings some regiment or other military body to the front which distinguishes itself for special valor, consistence or endurance. Cromwell's Ironsides Regiment, Caesar's Tenth Legion, the Old Guard of Napoleon, the Light Brigade at Balaklava, are all illustrious of this fact. Among these bands of heroes should be enrolled the Iron Brigade.

Detroit Evening Journal

2012 by Lance J. Herdegen

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Herdegen, Lance J.

The Iron Brigade in Civil War and Memory / Lance J. Herdegen. 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-61121-106-1

ISBN 9781611211078 (epub)

ISBN 9781611211078 (prc)

1. United States. Army. Iron Brigade (1861-1865). 2. United States

HistoryCivil War, 1861-1865Regimental histories. I. Title.

E493.5.I72H46 2012

973.7dc23

2012031744

First edition, first printing

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For Shirley, whose grandmother was a daughter of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwa. Megwich

The Rebellion Must be Put Down in Blood The Best Fighting Rig Imaginable A Regiment of Badgers Led by a Coon Bull's Run A Story of Bravery and Love Lost

Give Us Good Guns and Respectable Clothing Our Higher Duty to the Constitution We Regarded Them as Heroes and They Were It is a New Life for Us All The Only Casualty of Patterson Park

A Place They Called Secessiondom Little Mac Put Him in the Band!

A Dashing Young Officer and a Maiden Fair Ready to Smell Powder Tied to Granny Lincoln's Apron String They Fight Like Devils It is Admitted We are Not Bad on a March New York and Pennsylvania Monopolize All the Glory Matt Bernard and Kindred Stories

A Hard Day for Mother The Woods are Full of Em! Help in the Nick of Time! Wisconsin and Indiana Blood Spilled for Naught Left to Fight the Whole Rebel Army by Himself A Slow Backward Step Under Fire The Country was Shocked and Discouraged

I Have Seen Enough of the Horrors of War They Must be Made of Iron Who the Thunder is Your Father? The Iron Brigade of the West We Who Got Through Were Happy I Can Whip Lee Without Any Trouble at All We Have Held Our Lives Cheap The Men with Their Tall Hats Looked Ten Feet Tall Steady Infantry Work

Into the Cornfield What Grim-Looking Fellows They Were The Bloodiest Day of the War A Pile of Arms and Legs as High as a Church Window Equal to the Best Troops in any Army We Love the Old Flags A Sad Good-bye to Johnny, the War Horse A Foul Wrong Done to a Great and Good Man The Iron Brigade is Sound to the Core A Baptism of Fire for a New Regiment

This Day of Darkness and Peril The Return of Mickey, of Company K To be Shot like Sheep in a Huddle Every Man for Himself and a Rebel The Shooting of a Deserter Tired, Sore, Sleepy, Hungry, Dusty and Dirty as Pigs Buttermilk at 25-cents a Glass The Michigan Boys Get Their Black Hats A Strangely Reticent Man A Show on the Streets of Gettysburg They are Coming, Give it to Them! Those Damned Black Hats! Go Like Hell!

A Long Line of Yelling Rebels In the Bloody Railroad Cut They Got You Down Mickey, Have They? We Fight a Little and Run a Little I Both Respected and Feared Him The Flag is Down! A Mule Train Charge of Wagons God Damn Em, Feed it to Em! Yelling at us to Halt and to Surrender Mangled Forms of Tall Westerners No Wonder You Men are Called the Iron Brigade

We Know Nothing about a Cemetery Hill A Confused Rabble of Disorganized Regiments Great Men are Apt to Make Great Mistakes You Have Refused a Kind Act They Meant to Make Trouble Pretty Soon All the Rebs Gone Someplace Vicksburg has Fallen A New Flag and a New Song Home and the Veteran Question

Sally had a Baby, and the Baby had Red Hair Going Home on 30-Day Furlough Grant Wants Fighters The Ominous Forebodings of War Your Work this Morning will not be Play A Strange and Terrible Struggle My God, No One Could Stop Him! I am a Prisoner, Sir! It was a Hot Place, I Can Tell You

A Shout and a War Whoop The Prince of Soldiers A Young Boy Seeking Freedom Whiz, Whiz, the Bullets go Over Our Heads Oh, Lord, Da Dun Shot Massa Big Jake A Perfect Storm of Bullets Grab a Root! All that is Left of the Old First Corps Ripping up Track and Winter Camp He has got a Load on and Going West to Start a Snake Farm Not in Accordance with Civilized Warfare

Kissing the Pine River Belles The General was Too Drunk for Business De Bes' Man Fat Eber Libed It was Proved the Draft Men Could Fight We Believed a Great Wrong Had Been Done Him Let Them Alone, They are Going Home You All Kick up a Row with Johnny Bull and We Alls Will Help You A Grave Blot on an Otherwise Great Victory Lincoln Dead, and the Assassin Would Have Been Torn Limb from Limb Old Boo, and Then Home

Glorious Remembrance Redemption and Absolution The Dark Shadow of War Was the War Worth its Horrible Cost? Their Fame Cannot be Mustered Out of the Memory of Men Others

Index

Illustrations appear throughout the book forthe convenience of the reader

The Iron Brigade may have been the best combat infantry brigade of the American Civil War. Composed originally of the 2nd, 6th, 7th Wisconsin, and the 19th Indiana, and supported by Battery B, 4th U.S. Artillery, its baptism of fire came on August 28, 1862, near Gainesville, Virginia, and continued on August 29-30 at Second Bull Run, September 14 at South Mountain, and September 17 at Antietam in Maryland. It was during those weeks the unit went from being just a Black Hat Brigade to an Iron Brigade of the West. After the fighting at Sharpsburg, Maryland, the brigade was reinforced by the addition of the 24th Michigan. Of course, it was at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, that the Iron Brigade won a place in American military history and was almost destroyed. The regimentsreinforced by volunteers as well as bounty and drafted menfought on through 1864 and 1865 to Appomattox Court House. It was all chance that the forces of war, one veteran said, placed the Black Hats where the fight was the thickest. At the end of the war, it was determined the Iron Brigade regiments suffered the highest percentage of loss of any brigade in the Union Armies.