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2nd Wisconsin Officers' Mess, 1862

South Mountain, Maryland. The Second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment was organized at Madison, Wisconsin on 11 June 1861 as a three-year regiment. During the Battle of South Mountain, Maryland, their performance drew the admiration of General Joseph Hooker who ever after referred to them as an Iron Brigade. View the original source document: WHI 1908

Date(s): September 14, 1862

Location: between Frederick and Hagerstown, Maryland (Google Map)

Other name(s): Crampton's, Turner's, and Fox's Gaps

Campaign: Maryland Campaign (September 1862)

Outcome: Union victory

Summary

The Union victory at the Battle of South Mountain, Maryland, stopped the Confederate advance into the North and spawned the nickname, the "Iron Brigade".

Two weeks after their victory at Second Bull Run, Confederate forces invaded the North. They headed for Maryland, where they thought Southern sympathizers would rise up and join them. Instead, they encountered Union troops on September 14, 1862, at South Mountain, between Frederick and Hagerstown. After a battle that raged for more than 12 hours, the Confederates retreated.

Wisconsin's Role

The 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th Wisconsin Infantry regiments fought in the gap between two mountains while other Union troops fought on adjacent hillsides. Seeing the brigade with these Wisconsin troops from a distance, the Union's top commander, General George McClellan, commented, "They must be made of iron." Historians believe that this was probably the origin of the name, "Iron Brigade." McClellan was told that the brigade had performed even more heroically two weeks earlier at Second Battle of Bull Run, and then he called them the "best troops in the world."

At South Mountain, 222 Wisconsin troops were killed or wounded, a heavy addition to the more than 700 lost two weeks earlier at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

Links to Learn More

• Read a Description of the Battle of South Mountain

  Pages 450-452 in E.B. Quiner's "Military History of Wisconsin" (Madison, 1866)

• View Related Images

• View Original Documents

[Source: Report on the Nation's Civil War Battlefields (Washington, 1993); Estabrook, C. Records and Sketches of Military Organizations (Madison, 1914); Love, W. Wisconsin in the War of the Rebellion (Madison, 1866).]