A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A [Hardcover]

Jeffry D. Wert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 17, 1999

A Brotherhood of Valor is the story of the men who served in two of the most famous combat units of the Civil War, the Stonewall Brigade of the Confederacy and the Iron Brigade of the Union. They fought in some of the most famous and bloody engagements of the war, from First and Second Manassas (Bull Run) to Sharpsburg (Antietam), Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. In telling the stories of these two brigades, historian Jeffry D. Wert offers a visceral depiction of the Civil War from the perspective of the ordinary soldiers who fought in it.

Virginia's Stonewall Brigade got its name from its legendary commander, General Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson. Made up mainly of men from the Shenandoah Valley, it fought with distinction even after its commander suffered fatal wounds at Chancellorsville. The Iron Brigade was formed in what were then the western states of Wisconsin and Indiana. The similarities between the brigades were many. Both were made up largely of farmers, many of them family men with wives and often children left behind. They believed strongly in the causes for which they fought. They fought on opposite sides, but they shared many of the same hardships throughout the war. They were often hungry and astonishingly poorly clad. Many of the Southern soldiers, and some of the Northerners, too, fought barefoot. They often slept on the ground in freezing weather with nothing more than a blanket to cover them, and sometimes not even that. They marched on muddy roads in driving rain, sometimes on little or no sleep.

Most of the soldiers on both sides were literate, and many wrote touching letters home to their families. Wert quotes liberally from these moving letters, which bring an immediacy to the horrors of the Civil War that no other source can match. Soldiers describe the shock of seeing nearby comrades fall mortally wounded, knowing that they themselves could as easily have been killed. Seldom has the story of the Civil War been so powerfully told.

The Stonewall Brigade and the Iron Brigade fought in the major battles of their theater of the war and faced each other on battlefields three times. Eventually they came to recognize and respect one another.

A Brotherhood of Valor is the story of soldiers who fought on opposite sides but shared a sense of duty and honor, men who were, as Wert says, more alike than different. This is the foot soldier's Civil War, vividly told in an outstanding narrative history.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson was arguably the greatest commander of the Civil War. Yet "Stonewall" Jackson owed much of his success to the troops who served under him. He eagerly gave them their due: "You cannot praise these men of my brigade too much; they have fought, marched, and endured more than I even thought they would." The Stonewall Brigade, composed mainly of Virginians from the Shenandoah Valley, proved its mettle at First Manassas and never let up--even after its esteemed leader was shot down at Chancellorsville. Their equally elite counterparts in the Army of the Potomac were known as the Iron Brigade, hardy westerners drawn from Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan. By focusing on these two groups, historian Jeffry Wert retells the story of the Civil War's eastern theater as it was experienced by these ordinary men from North and South.

His battle descriptions are riveting, especially when he covers Antietam:

Three times the Georgians charged towards the guns, and three times they were repelled. Union infantry west of the battery ripped apart the attacker's flank, and the artillerists unleashed more canister.... Finally, the Georgians could withstand the punishment no longer, and as more Union infantry piled into the Cornfield, Hood's wrecked division retreated towards West Woods and Dunker Church. When asked later where his command was, Hood replied, "Dead on the field."

But the book is perhaps most notable for the way in which it describes the everyday hardships befalling each side. They often lacked food, shoes, blankets, and other military necessities. When the war began, the men believed deeply in their conflicting causes. Before it was over, writes Wert, "the war itself became their common enemy." Wert is slowly but surely gaining a reputation as one of the finest popular historians writing about the Civil War; A Brotherhood of Valor will undoubtedly advance his claim. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

It's Wert's good fortune?and ours?that the two most interesting Confederate and Union units left such wonderful paper trails. Wert (Custer, etc.) takes full advantage of this and delivers a first-rate book about the two most renowned infantry commands of the Civil War, which confronted each other at Manassas (Bull Run), Fredericksburg, Antietam, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. Through skillful use of period letters, diaries and action reports, Wert paints a vivid portrait of the Confederate and Union soldiers who bled together across the killing grounds of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Particularly appealing is the way this volume allows readers soldier's-eye views from both sides of key battles. A good example of this is when we learn that the Union line that appeared so formidable to frightened young Confederates in the cornfield at Antietam was in fact a confused mix of equally terrified, equally young men in blue, unsure of their strategy and?at that moment?unsure of their commanders as well. In addition to being brave, the men of the Stonewall and Iron brigades were eloquent and prolific writers. Armed with a wealth of first-person accounts, Wert often (and wisely) steps back, allowing the soldiers to tell their own stories as no one else can. Agent, Robert Gottlieb at the William Morris Agency.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition. edition (February 17, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684824353
• ISBN-13: 978-0684824352
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,806,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very enjoyable dual unit chronicle, April 24, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A (Hardcover)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I am something of a Civil War buff, but I've never been a big fan of the "unit histories", prefering narative history instead. This book bridges that gap. The story of these two most famous brigades of the Civil War, one Union, one Confederate, is told more as a narative than a unit history. There's plenty here though to interest those who do like the stories of the individual soldiers, regiments and the brigades they belonged to. What Mr. Wert is best at is giving the reader the feel of what it was like to belong to one of these brigades, tracing their structure and commanders from the start of the war till both brigades were so decimated by casualties that they both almost literaly faded away. I'd recomend it to anyone interested in the Civil War who has a basic knowledge of the War. I've read a couple of Mr Wert's other books....his biographies of Custer and Longstreet. If you liked them, you'll like A Brotherhood of Valor.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dual Unit history is worthwhile, February 23, 2003

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C.S.A., and the Iron Brigade, U.S.A (Hardcover)

Jeffrey Wert has been writing Civil War history for a good while, and I've read most of his books, starting with the history of the Shenandoah Valley campaign in 1864. The present book is a history of the campaigns of the Stonewall Brigade, and the Iron Brigade. Both units are much storied: each has an individual history currently available. The Iron Brigade's is by noted Civil War historian Alan T. Nolan; the Stonewall Brigade's is one of the early works of Stonewall Jackson biographer James I. Robertson, Jr. Wert melds these two books with many others, diaries and letters, and fashions a sort of dual group biography of the units, following them across the battlefields of Virginia.

The Stonewall brigade earned its nickname at Manassas, where it defended a prominent terrain feature called Henry House Hill. This feature, and the Brigade's defense of it, proved to be the pivotal point of the battle. The author does a good job bringing this and other battles to life through the accounts of the participants and witnesses. One of the regiments that later formed the Iron Brigade, the 2nd Wisconsin, also participated in the battle, and ran away with the rest of the army when the Union finally lost the battle.

This points up the first annoyance of the book. Wert has chosen two units to follow, but one of them was at its peak before the other one was. This means that the early part of the book concentrates to a fair extent on the Confederates, while the latter part of the book features the Yankee unit to a larger extent. The two units did fight on the same battlefield three times, though they only really opposed one another once, at Groveton, or Brawner Farm. That engagement marked the debut of the Iron Brigade (then known as the Black Hat Brigade, after their distinctive headgear) as a unit, and sowed the seeds of their reputation.

The book follows the two units through Gettysburg, but afterwards only summarizes the campaigns that the survivors participated in. The Overland Campaign of 1864 saw the virtual destruction of both units. Wert devotes considerably less space to these events than he did to the earlier campaigns, especially Gettysburg.

I genuinely enjoyed this book. Wert is one of the more prolific Civil War writers these days, and his books are lively and enjoyable, while also providing interesting information and having a point of view. I would recommend this book to all interested in the Civil War.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars well worth reading, March 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: A Brotherhood of Valor: The Common Soldiers of the Stonewall Brigade, C. S. A. and the Iron Brigade, U. S. A. (Paperback)

This is a very interesting account of the Iron Brigade and the
Stonewall Brigade. It was interesting how these two very tough
brigades began the Civil War, met each other again and again in
savage battles, only to be almost completely spent by the war's
end. Well researched.