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216CIVIL WA R HISTORY pendence, and poverty of great masses of fellow whites. Both men, in short, had spotted weaknesses in the American dream; both were aware of a rising plutocracy and a declining agriculture fully a generation before these became major nationalproblems. Yet their solutions were fantastic. Fitzhugh believed that the North's answer to the conflict between labor and capital would have to be the adoption of slavery, which alone could identify the interests of the two. And Helper held that all the woes of the farming South would vanish with the immediate abolition of slavery, which lay "at the root of all the shame, poverty, ignorance, tyranny and imbecility of the South." Both writers, otherwise shrewd, defended these gross oversimplifications with angry energy . Their intelligence failed to show them the infinite subdety, complexity, tragedy, and paradox of man's struggle to create just institutions. Mavericks though they were, in a sense, Fitzhugh and Helper shared these absolutes with thousands of their fellow nineteenth-century Americans. Thereby , civil war was brought closer. The crisis of the fifties became the war of the sixties, and this book will help readers to understand how the one grew inexorably into the other. Bernard A. Weisberger University of Chicago The Iron Brigade. By Alan Nolan. (New York: Macmillan Co., 1961. Pp. xvi, 412. $6.95.) With the opening guns of Sumter, the cry of "On to Richmond!" rang through the North and sent the Army of the Potomac on an ordeal of bloody heartbreak and frustration. One of the brigades in the Union army which vainly tried to break through the lines of Robert E. Lee was composed of four regiments which came from the old Northwest Territory. The 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin Volunteers, together with the 19th Indiana, first made up what came to be known as "Iron Brigade." With the addition of Battery B of the 4th U.S. Artillery, the Westerners became part of the Federal forces which headed into northern Virginia. John Gibbon took over the brigadewhen its first brigadier, Rufus King, was moved up to division commander. A professional army officer whose North Carolina origins almost lost him his promotion, Gibbon worked hard to instill a hearty spirit and a rigorous discipline into his brigade. As part of his program he outfitted his men with the tall black hats which soon became a well-known mark of the Western troops. After its baptism of fire at Brawner Farm on August 28, 1862, where it successfully fought off a surprise attack by Stonewall Jackson's troops, the brigade was involved in every major engagement between Washington and Richmond. At Second Bull Run Gibbon's men were assigned to cover the retreat of the Union forces. When Lee struck across the Potomac, it was the Western Brigade which was sent slashing across Turner's Gap to strike at Lee's exposed position. Despite the fact that a powerful Confederate force Book Reviews217 had set up almost impregnable defenses along both sides of the National Road, Gibbon's troops smashed their way through and here won themselves the title of the "Iron Brigade." At Antietam, at Fredericksburg, and then at Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863, the Iron Brigade, now commanded by Solomon Meredith, played a prominent role. At Antietam they suffered such heavy losses that their thin ranks had to be filled out with the men of the 24th Michigan, which now became part of the Iron Brigade. When Lee once again broke loose and sent his forces swinging northward into Pennsylvania, it was the Iron Brigade which helped to plug the gap. Moving up the Emmitsburg Road, the Westerners heard the sounds of battle and moved off to their left toward Seminary Ridge, where they ran head on into Archer's Tennessee and Alabama regiments. Against overwhelming odds the Iron Brigade held its position as the Confederate force grew larger every hour and threatened at any moment to completely envelope their dwindling lines. When the main Union force had taken up defensive positions along Cemetery Ridge the Iron Brigade was at last ordered to withdraw, after having suffered casualties of from 65 to 80 per centi For...

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