The Men Stood Like Iron: How the Iron Brigade Won Its Name by Lance J. Herdegen (review)

BOOK REVIEWS might have been more persuasive explicit connections been made to the 50 broader national context Middleton' s assertion that the treatment of free blacks in Ohio was worse than elsewhere in litood <./ the North, fbr example, needlessly overstates the case and fails to explain why S! so many free blac] s and fugitives ended I up in Ohio In addition, the Whiggish framework allows little room for ambigu- , ities and unduly si mplifies Issues and the PL positions of majoi figures Middleton' s 5 I L2 .. 3, . tendency to assign political leaders and their supporters to one of two categories 3 } i I based primarily on their support ofor op- L position to black civil rights obscures a complex middle ground that was integral to the public discourse The moral issue 4 t: 4, 't tbit : le IS, of slavery and the political piinciples of equality and lustice may have been clear 4, i L.= 3 enough, but even well intentioned men and women were o ften uncertain lust how freedom and equality could be achieved 1** j 1 , f»' ' " ,' lf,1,:,@ 0* 1- , ' 1 » in a racist society A sense of that deep- experienced the war in the Army of the er and more trot bling struggle is not Potomac ( and also the Army of Virginia) always apparent from 1861 through November of 1862 and at Gettysburg in July 1863 The Second, Sixth, and Seventh Wisconsin, Emil Pocock the Nineteenth Indiana, and later the Eastern Connecticut State University Twentyfourth Michigan Volunteer Infantry regiments,along with Battery B of the Fourth U S Artillery, composed the only exclusively western brigade in the Army of the Potomac The author conLance J. Herdepien. 7be Men Stood siders the Iron Brigade, as it came to be Like Iron:How tbe Iron Brigade Won Its known after the battle of Antietam,from Name. Bloomington Indiana University the perspectives of the soldiers, tracing Press, 1997, reprint 2005 271 pp ISBN individual and collective experiences of 025321825X ( papc'r), $ 19 95 the western volunteers through the battles that transformed them into seasoned 71 veterans Brawner Farm, Second Bull e Men Stood Like Iron is a cornpelRun , South Mountain, Antietam, and ng account c,f how regiments from Gettysburg I[ he volume highlights the Wisconsin, Indiana, and later Michigan, homesickness, camp boredom, and early 66 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY expectations of the soldiers of 1861 and effectively demonstrates that, by the autumn of 1862, combat had transformed the soldiers, blunting their idealism and causing them to look more critically upon officers, political leaders, and civilians at home. Making use of soldiers' memoirs, letters and diaries ( including those in private collections), and official reports, the volume presents the reader with a striking and moving narrative of life and death in the Iron Brigade. Tbe Men Stood Like Iron also raises issues of state, regional, and national identities and how these influenced the soldiers and the war itself. Throughout the book, the soldiers' identifications with their states as well as their region is evident . Less clear is the relationship state and regional loyalty had to nationalism and the national army The author finds that the troops moved away from state loyalties and began to think in terms of nation during the months spent drilling in George B. McClellan' s Army of the Potomac ( 4445 )and shows that soldiers continued to support McClellan after Lincoln removed him from command in November 1862. Throughout the work, the soldiers'support for their commander, John Gibbon, a native of Pennsylvania who had been raised in North Carolina,is equally evident,as is their sense of themselves as westerners: Badgers, Hoosiers, and Wolverines. We learn that the army, through its battles and sacrifices, had become not McClellan' s but Lincoln' s,a national army committed to purging the nation of slavery and providing a " new birth offreedom." Yet the role of state and regional identity in this process remains unclear ( 216). Moreover, the work misses opportunities to expand on the army' s relationship with civilians, the transition from limited to total warfare, and the evolution of soldiers 'views on slavery and emancipation. It does,however,highlight the compelling experiences of individual soldiers,including Ohioan Rufus Dawes, captain in the Sixth Wisconsin,whose memoir and letters are a central source of the work, and John Cook of Cincinnati, who went to war as a bugler at the age of fourteen and earned a medal of honor for his service as a gunner at Antietam. Through these voices and many others, the author deftly depicts western soldiers' experiences in camp and in combat in the eastern theiter . The paperback edition of 7be Men Stood Like Iron will make that story all the more accessible to readers interested in western soldiers' experiences during the first half of the Civil Wan Christine Dee Fitchburg State College Robert R.Mackey. * e Uncipit War:Irregular Warfare in tbe Upper South,18611865 . Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,2004. 288 pp. ISBN 0806136243 hardcover), $ 19.95. obert Mackey' s study of Confederate I\. irregular warfare displaces romanticized accounts of Nathan Bedford Forrest , Robert Mosby,and other unconventional warriors. 7be Uncivil War presents three case studies from the Upper South, each illustrative of a different category SUMM ER 2006 67 ...