The best books on the Union Army’s Iron Brigade

In my opinion, this is one of the best Civil War memoirs ever written.

Rufus Dawes (the great-grandson of William Dawes, who alerted colonial minutemen prior to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, along with Paul Revere and Samuel Prescott) was only 20 years old when he was commissioned a Captain in the 6th Wisconsin Infantry (a regiment in the “Iron Brigade”). He served his three-year term of service and resigned his commission in August 1864; taking part in all of the regiment’s battles up to that point (and some of the bloodiest of the war).

He often led the regiment in battle; taking command at the battle of Antietam when the regiment’s colonel, Edward S. Bragg, was wounded and at Gettysburg, when Bragg was absent. After his resignation, he was brevetted a brigadier general for meritorious service. 

Drawing extensively on his diaries and letters, Dawes published Service in 1890. This book is not simply an account of his military experiences and that of his regiment, but also a very personal account of his view of the war; including opinions about slavery, individual soldiers, and camp life. Dawes later served a term as a U.S. Congressman and passed away in 1899.

Published in 1993, the book is part of Fordham University Press’ “The Irish in the Civil War” series. The book is a collection of James P. Sullivan’s newspaper reminiscences published in the 1880s in the Milwaukee Sunday Telegraph. 

James Patrick Sullivan, born in Ireland, was a 17-year-old farm hand in Juneau County, Wisconsin when he first enlisted. Sullivan fought in most of the regiment’s battles and was wounded at least three times; enlisting on three separate occasions (the only soldier in the regiment to do so). The “Rebs” just couldn’t keep Mickey down (He was called “Mickey,” in his company).

In his memoir, Dawes wrote that Sullivan was not only “a heroic soldier” but “For genuine sallies of humor at unexpected times, I have never seen his equal.” He had an “unconquerable good humor and genuine wit. Such men,” Dawes wrote, “are of priceless value in an army.”

Sullivan’s account of Gettysburg, which runs 19 pages in the book (with five pages of notes by the editors), is arguably one of the best ever written by an enlisted soldier.

This “memoir” was originally serialized in 1902 in the National Tribune, a weekly publication aimed at veterans, under the title “Adventures of an Iron Brigade Man.”

Born in Canada, Robert Beecham’s family moved to Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, when he was about five years old. Beecham served as an enlisted man in the 2nd Wisconsin Infantry regiment (part of the Iron Brigade) and fought in the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, where he was taken prisoner.

After being returned in a prisoner exchange, Beecham was commissioned a 1st Lieutenant in the 23rd United States Colored Troops. With them, he fought at the Battle of the Crater in July 1864, where he was wounded and again taken prisoner. After eight months in a Confederate prison, he escaped, but voluntarily surrendered himself in order to be exchanged (again). He rejoined his regiment and was promoted to captain in May 1865, but resigned with the end of the fighting.

In the telling of his personal story, Beecham not only describes the daily life of the soldier, the conditions in military hospitals, and his experience in Confederate prisons, but takes issue with the arrogance of officers, criticizes fellow veterans who seem to have only remembered victories and forgotten defeats and, as an unreconstructed Unionist, took issue with the “Lost Cause” myth.

Beecham also honored the courage of the black troops he commanded. “While with the boys of the Black Division, as it was called,” he wrote, “I always felt safe, . . and a soldier feels safe when he is with reliable men who possess the courage and the ability to meet any danger on the shortest possible notice and stand together like soldiers till the last man falls, if necessary. When in the field with the old Iron Brigade, I never felt one whit safer than I did with the regiments of the Black division.”

For its humor and freshness of perspective, Beecham’s memoir stands out.

Herdegen’s fairly new history of the Iron Brigade, published in 2012, rightfully supplants Alan Nolan’s classic history, The Iron Brigade.

Published some 60 years after Nolan’s history and coming in at 656 pages, Herdegen is able to include previously unpublished archival material, letters, photos, journals, and other primary sources. Where Nolan’s history basically stops after the battle of Gettysburg, Herdegen’s book tells the history of the Iron Brigade all the way to Appomattox and beyond; including information about memorial and reunion activity.

Herdegen’s extension of the story of the Iron Brigade into the 1864 Overland campaign through Petersburg and Appomattox provides an important element to its story that has been given short shrift in many of the previous works on the Iron Brigade.

As somebody who tends to use too many quotations in my writing, I appreciate that Herdegen frequently uses quotes. I like hearing the “voice” and reading the words and descriptions of the soldiers who were actually there. And for the scholarly minded, Herdegen uses footnotes instead of endnotes; making it refreshingly easy to know the source of the passage in question. 

If one were to read only one book on the Iron Brigade, this is it. It is hard to imagine a future historian surpassing Herdegen’s achievement. I suppose it will happen, but it is hard to imagine how.

Published in 2025 (hot off the presses), Marten’s book, as he says in his Introduction, is not a regimental history but a regimental “biography.”

As a “biography,” Martin looks at the regiment as a “living organism.” Using a construct that I have often thought about, Martin notes that there were “multiple ‘Sixth Wisconsins.’” As illness, wounds, and transfers took their toll on the initial 1,000 men, another 1,000 joined during the course of the war. This turnover of men; the replacement of veterans by enlistees, substitutes, and draftees, “created an instability,” Martin notes, that must be appreciated in order to fully understand the history of the Sixth.

Using the framework of the “long Civil War,” a long duration view of the Sixth Wisconsin from the creation of the regiment to the death of the last surviving member, Martin explores the history of the regiment “from peace to war and back again,” looking at the “lived experience of its men and their families.” 

An important part of the book is Marten’s examination of the lives of the men after the war, including veterans’ organizations, and their experiences at the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg (like Herdegen). He uses the experiences of the men of the Sixth as “a kind of laboratory to study” the creation of the Union army, its years of fighting, and then the “remembering” of the war.

Martin looks at Civil War soldiers’ “lived reality” and is less concerned with how the soldiers survived and more about “what they survived.” Martin’s book is unique in the way he looks at the men of the Sixth Wisconsin. He gives a fuller picture of what they experienced during and after the war, how they understood it, and the meaning it had for them.