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Ever heard of the New York regiments that made up the Army of the Potomac’s first ‘Iron Brigade’? Probably not.

“Iron Brigade.” The name conjures up images of stout men from the Midwest, tall black hats pulled low over their eyes as they surge forward, bayonets leveled, through a bullet- swept cornfield in Maryland or toward a mass of Rebels roaring out of a stream bottom at Gettysburg. You certainly can’t say that the Army of the Potomac’s Black Hat Brigade from Wisconsin, Indiana and Michigan didn’t deserve the moniker. After all, the Western boys—known for wearing distinctive black Hardee dress hats—repeatedly found themselves in the thick of the heavy fighting in the Eastern theater’s key battles of late 1862 and early 1863. The brigade earned the respect of opponents at Brawner’s Farm, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville. And in the opening hours of the Battle of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, the brigade’s legacy was cemented with its determined stand against Brigadier General James Archer’s Confederates. By the end of the first day of that battle, the brigade had lost 1,153 of its 1,885-man force.

The Black Hat boys, however, weren’t the only Federal unit known as the Iron Brigade. In fact, they weren’t even the first. That honor went to the 22nd, 24th, 30th and 84th (also known as the 14th Brooklyn Militia) New York Infantry Regiments, which were brigaded together in the Union’s Army of Virginia in April 1862. But unlike the Iron Brigade from the West, the New Yorkers’ contributions to the Union war effort, particularly at the Second Battle of Bull Run in August 1862, are often overlooked.

Both Iron Brigades served in the 1st Division of the Army of Virginia’s III Corps. At Second Bull Run the New Yorkers comprised the 1st Brigade, under Brig. Gen. John P. Hatch. They were joined by Berdan’s 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters shortly before the battle, an arrangement that would last for the rest of the brigade’s history. The 2nd, 6th and 7th Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana constituted the 4th Brigade of the division, and were commanded by Brig. Gen. John Gibbon. (The 24th Michigan joined the brigade in October, after Antietam.)

The New Yorkers’ first commander, Brig. Gen. Christopher Columbus Augur, reportedly bestowed the “Iron” nickname on his brigade early in its existence, but ironically that was because of his men’s impressive marching ability rather than their fighting skills. There are numerous accounts of how the nickname came to be.

According to one story, Augur adopted the name after the brigade’s July 1862 raid from Fredericksburg to the Po River in central Virginia, when Union Brig. Gen. Marsena Patrick re – marked to him, “Your men must be made of iron to make such marches.”

A.C. Tibbals of the 84th New York and H.E. Dickenson of the 24th New York credited Augur, not Patrick, for the nickname, and fellow soldier S.E. Chandler attributed it to another Union officer. In one of his letters home, Chandler wrote of an incident in April 1862 when the brigade needed only one day to march from Catlett’s Station, Va., to Fredericksburg, despite fighting a skirmish along the way. Colonel Judson Kilpatrick, who made an identical march with his 2nd New York Cavalry but took two days to cover the same ground, said afterward to Augur, “Your men must be made of iron to endure such marching.” Listening to that exchange was Colonel Edward Frisby, 30th New York, who chirped, “Yes, this is the Iron Brigade.” Writing to his family on April 22, 1862, Lewis Benedict of the 22nd New York affirmed Chandler’s version of the story: “A Regular Army Officer who came with us on our last march has christened us The Iron Brigade, and says our march has not been equaled by any troops during the war.”

Adding to the legend that the nickname first belonged to the New Yorkers was Lt. Col. Samuel Beardsley of the 24th New York, who noted a similar rugged march the brigade made that August. In a letter to his family from Culpeper, Va., Beardsley noted that the brigade had “marched until 10 pm. about 29 miles, or over 50 miles in the two days. Sixteen miles a day is considered good marching, so you can see why we are sometimes called the ‘Cast Iron Brigade.’”

Since the New Yorkers served in the same division with the men from the West, the Iron Brigade nickname had to be familiar to their compatriots. Lieutenant Colonel William F. Fox, a veteran of the 107th New York and the author of Regimental Losses in the Civil War, an authoritative work familiar to many researchers, flatly stated that General Hatch’s four New York regiments were the original Iron Brigade. Fox also contended that after the New York troops were mustered out in the spring of 1863, right before the Battle of Gettysburg, Gibbon’s brigade acquired the nickname and kept it until the end of the war. In one of his letters, S.E. Chandler seconded Fox’s account.

While the New Yorkers were justifiably proud of their marching prowess, their battle record also matches up well with that of the Western Iron Brigade. Both Hatch’s and Gibbon’s brigades were part of Brig. Gen. Rufus King’s 1st Division and saw their first major combat during the three-day Battle of Second Bull Run. On August 28, the opening day of the fight, Gibbon’s outmanned and green Westerners’ made an impressive stand against “Stonewall” Jackson’s seasoned Rebel troops at Brawner’s Farm. The New Yorkers supported a battery during that fight, which ended in a draw, but were heavily engaged in other fighting at nearby Manassas later in the battle.

For most of the battle’s second day, King’s division remained unengaged, but Hatch assumed command of the 1st Division when King suffered an epileptic seizure. Colonel Timothy Sullivan of the 24th New York took command of the New York Iron Brigade.

On August 30, Maj. Gen. John Pope, the Army of Virginia commander, mistook the decision by Maj. Gen. James Longstreet’s Confederates to shift their position near the intersection of the Warrenton Turnpike and the Groveton-Sudley Road as a retreat, and decided to launch an attack. As Hatch described the situation: “I was ordered…to move the division on the Gainesville road in pursuit of the enemy, who, he informed me, were retreating. Gibbon’s brigade had been detached to support some batteries. With the three other brigades of the division and [Captain George] Gerrish’s [New Hampshire] battery of howitzers I proceeded with all the speed possible, hoping by harassing the enemy’s rear to turn their retreat into a rout.”

Sullivan’s men, led by the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters, who had recently been added to the brigade, marched southwest along the Warrenton Turnpike directly into the face of Longstreet’s force as it arrived on the battlefield. Recalled Theron Haight of the 24th New York, “[A]s our line was being rectified the crack of musketry in front of us, almost in our faces, informed us we had been mistaken in the nature of the work to be performed.”

Confederate General John Bell Hood’s division of Longstreet’s command had launched an attack against the New Yorkers. In the gathering twilight, there was much confusion among the troops, since visibility was poor, but the unlucky Union men silhouetted in the open were decimated by Confederate troops concealed in nearby woods.

“We were met by a force consisting of three brigades of infantry, one of which was posted in the woods on the left, parallel to and about an eighth of a mile from the road,” Hatch reported. “The two other brigades were drawn up in line of battle, one on each side of the road. These were in turn supported by a large portion of the rebel forces, estimated by a prisoner, who was taken to their rear, at about 30,000 men, drawn up in successive lines, extending 11⁄2 miles to the rear.

“The struggle, lasting some threequarters of an hour, was a desperate one, being in many instances a hand-to-hand conflict. Night had now come on, our loss had been severe, and the enemy occupying a position in the woods on our left which gave them a flank fire upon us, I was forced to give the order for a retreat. The retreat was executed in good order.”

“[W]e were badly cut up,” an officer in the 22nd New York later noted in his journal.

The worst was yet to come, however. On August 30, Hatch’s division was attached to Maj. Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s V Corps and ordered to charge a well-defended railroad cut that the Confederates were using as a trench. Hatch formed the division in seven lines, with the New York Iron Brigade occupying the first two. In a headlong charge, they swept through a strip of woods and out into the open fields in front of the cut. Their impetuous attack brought the New Yorkers literally up to the railroad embankment, or at least a few of them. A soldier in the 24th New York, looking behind him from the base of the embankment, saw “many were lying on the ground behind us, dead, or yielding up their young lives with the blood that was oozing from their gaping wounds.” Too few to go forward, the survivors clung to the embankment, occasionally raising their weapons over their heads to discharge them at the Confederates who were huddled on the other side of the embankment.

The trailing elements of Hatch’s division faltered and fell back, leaving the Iron Brigade at a point where it had little chance to go forward or backward, and the Rebels soon began pitching rocks at the stranded Yanks. “Huge stone[s] began to fall about us, and now and then one of them would happen to strike one or another of us with very unpleasant effect,” wrote the 24th New York’s Theron Haight. Eventually those able to do so retreated, but many of the men were captured when subsequent supporting attacks did not materialize. When the battle ended, the brigade had suffered 772 casualties of the 2,475 officers and men engaged—a loss of 31 percent, which included a stunning loss of 17 officers killed and another 34 wounded.

Captain James McCoy of the 22nd New York was absent from the ranks on August 30 because he was burying his brother, Captain Robert McCoy, who had been killed in combat the previous day. He later recorded that by the evening of the 30th his regiment had only one captain, two first lieutenants and three second lieutenants who had not been wounded. That casualty total was exceeded by only one other brigade, Gibbon’s, which suffered 894 casualties—a loss of 32 percent. Certainly both Iron Brigades proved their valor at Second Bull Run.

In the days following the battle, the Confederate offensive into Maryland prompted President Abraham Lincoln to mobilize an army led by Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan to protect both Baltimore and the U.S. capital as well as drive General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia out of Maryland. Hatch’s division became part of the newly designated I Corps of the Army of the Potomac, with a new corps commander, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker. Colonel Walter Phelps Jr., who had been absent at Bull Run on sick leave, took command of the Iron Brigade— what was left of it, that is. Phelps wrote to his wife that commanding officers admired the brigade, saying they were called “the Iron Brigade for their coolness, intrepidity, and stolidity under fire.”

Although they had acquired their name from marching prowess, the New Yorkers had demonstrated that they deserved the appellation by virtue of their gallant charges, stubborn fighting and horrific losses at Bull Run. Now a hollow shell of the brigade made the march into Maryland in pursuit of Lee’s army.

Hatch’s division’s first engagement of the Maryland Campaign took place at Turner’s Gap on South Mountain. Leaving its bivouac near the Monocacy River east of Frederick, Hooker’s I Corps marched through Frederick City, across Catoctin Mountain at Hagan’s Gap and arrived at the foot of South Mountain by midafternoon. Major General Ambrose Burnside, commanding the Army of the Potomac’s Right Wing, unknown to Hooker detached one brigade— Gibbon’s—from his corps to move straight up the National Road to hold a Confederate brigade in place while the other 10 brigades moved north to attack the flank through Frosttown Gap. Phelps’ brigade took part in the difficult climb up the face of South Mountain, driving back the relatively small portion of Brig. Gen. Robert Rodes’ Alabama brigade. Near the top of the mountain, Phelps’ Iron Brigade, in concert with Marsena Patrick’s brigade and supported in the rear by Abner Doubleday’s brigade, strongly confronted three understrength Confederate brigades that were posted behind a fence across an open field. Charging the position, Phelps with his four regiments—the 2nd U.S. Sharpshooters having been detached elsewhere—“went into this action with less than 400 officers and men, and our loss on that day is a fraction less than 25 per cent.”

The New Yorkers suffered 93 casualties, while the Sharpshooters lost only two men as they screened the advance up the mountainside. Counting the 2nd USSS, Phelps’ brigade losses were approximately 18 percent, but of the troops who actually participated in the attack, Phelps’ 25 percent claim is accurate.

Again, a comparison to Gibbon’s brigade is useful. The Black Hats had been repulsed in a determined attack on the Confederate center, losing 318 casualties out of 1,346 engaged, or a loss of approximately 24 percent. This similarity of experience and losses continued three days later at the Battle of Antietam. Gibbon’s brigade led the advance into the bloody Miller Cornfield on the morning of September 17, but Phelps’ Iron Brigade was the Westerners’ direct support. Phelps’ brigade numbered only 425 officers and men, yet when Gibbon’s troops were stymied in their initial advance, it was the New Yorkers who moved forward and joined them. In the words of Major Rufus Dawes of the 6th Wisconsin, “Men and officers of New York are fused into a common mass, in the frantic struggle to shoot fast.”

Once again, both brigades suffered heavy losses. Phelps’ brigade suffered 154 casualties, or 36 percent of those engaged. Gibbon’s brigade carried 971 men into battle and lost 348, also about 36 percent. In three weeks, the two brigades had experienced some of the most ferocious combat of the Civil War, and both had exhibited fighting qualities that elicited praise and admiration from peers and superiors.

Gibbon’s brigade is reputed to have attained the coveted nickname Iron Brigade for its attack at Turner’s Gap. This might be true, but in no way does it diminish or supersede the accomplishments of the original Iron Brigade—the New Yorkers—who fought just as gallantly as their Western comrades in every contest that they faced.

 

Thomas G. Clemens lives near the Antietam battlefield and is the president of the Save Historic Antietam Foundation (www.shaf.org).

Originally published in the April 2009 issue of Civil War Times. To subscribe, click here.