The storied Iron Brigade carved out a unique reputation during the Civil
War. Its men fought on many hard fields, but they performed their most
legendary exploits just outside a small Pennsylvania town called
Gettysburg on the first day of July in 1863. There were many heroic
actions that morning and afternoon, but the fight along an unfinished
deep scar in the ground north of the Chambersburg Pike was one never
forgotten, and is the subject of Lance J. Herdegen's and William J. K.
Beaudot's award-winning (and long out of print) In the Bloody Railroad
Cut at Gettysburg: The 6th Wisconsin of the Iron Brigade and its Famous
Charge.
The railroad cut fighting was led mainly by the "Calico Boys" of the 6th
Wisconsin Volunteers. Detached from the balance of the Iron Brigade, the
Badgers of the 6th charged nearly 200 yards to meet a Confederate
brigade that had swung into what looked like an ideal defensive position
along an unfinished railroad cut northwest of town. The fighting was
close, brutal, personal, and bloody--and it played a key role in the
final Union victory.
The Wisconsin men always remembered that moment when they stood under "a
galling fire" in an open field just north of the pike. Using hundreds of
firsthand accounts, many previously unpublished, Herdegen and Beaudot
carry their readers into the very thick of the fighting. The air seemed
"full of bullets," one private recalled, the men around him dropping "at
a fearful rate." Pvt. Amos Lefler was on his hands and knees spitting
blood and teeth with Capt. Johnny Ticknor of Company K down and dying
just a handful of yards away. Pvt. James P. Sullivan felt defenseless,
unable as he was to get his rifle-musket to fire because of bad
percussion caps. Rebel buckshot, meanwhile, smashed the canteen and
slashed the hip of Sgt. George Fairfield. Behind the Wisconsin men, Lt.
Col. Rufus Dawes watched a "fearful" and "destructive" Confederate fire
crashing with "an unbroken roar before us. Men were being shot by
twenties and thirties."
While frantically loading and shooting, the Badgers leaned into the
storm of bullets coming from the cut 175 yards away. The Westerners
pushed slowly into the field and--at that very instant when victory or
defeat teetered undecided--the "Jayhawkers" in the Prairie du Chien
Company began shouting "Charge! Charge! Charge!" And so they did. Young
Dawes lifted his sword and shouted "Forward! Forward Charge! Align on
the Colors!" It was at that moment, remembered Cpl. Frank Wallar, a
farmer-turned-soldier who would soon make his name known to history by
capturing the flag of the 2nd Mississippi, "there was a general rush and
yells enough to almost awaken the dead."
Out of print for nearly two decades, this facsimile reprint and its new
Introduction share with yet another generation of readers the story of
the 6th Wisconsin's magnificent charge. Indeed it is their story, and
how they remembered it. And it is one you will never forget.
