cc  >> Thank you all for coming  out to the Wisconsin Veterans  Museum for this very special  lecture with Mr. Lance Herdegen.  We're very excited to have Lance  here again.  As you know, the Wisconsin  Veterans Museum is an  educational activity of the  Wisconsin Department of Veterans  Affairs.  And so, without further adieu,  I'd like to introduce Lance, the  author of this fine book,  "Those Damned Black Hats!  The Iron Brigade and the  Gettysburg Campaign,"  which is available downstairs  in our bookstore.  So if you'd like to purchase one  after the talk, please go  downstairs.  Lance will be happy to sign one  for you.  Lance is an award winning  journalist and a former director  of the Institute of Civil War  Studies at Carroll University.  He previously worked as a  reporter and editor at United  Press International News  Service, covering national  politics and civil rights.  He is now the historical  consultant for the Civil War  Museum of Upper Middle West in  Kenosha.  He is the author of many  articles, and is regarded as the  authority on the Iron Brigade. 

 Ladies and Gentleman,  Lance Herdegen.  (applause)  >> Who is that guy?!  How did you guys all get  off from work?  (laughter)  >> We were all laid off!  (laughter)  >> I can see this is going to be  a rascally group.  I'm glad you're not  one of my classes.  It's always fun to come to the  Wisconsin Veterans Museum, which  is really one of the better  museums facilities in the  country.  Its displays downstairs are very  good.  And they have holdings of some  of Wisconsin's real treasures  from the Civil War period and  elsewhere.  This is the first time I've had  to talk here since the passing  of Dr. Richard Zeitland, of  course.  And what a great scholar he was.  Can't you hear me?  Is that better?  I'll lean closer to the  microphone.  So it's kind of a bittersweet  appearance for me with not  having Rich here. 

 He certainly was a great scholar  and I wanted to acknowledge what  a good friend he was to me and  to history, and to Wisconsin  history.  So today, I'm going to talk  about my book, "Those Damned  Black Hats! The Iron Brigade  and the Gettysburg Campaign,"  and what I found out,  and what I discovered.  Then I'll be happy to answer  questions briefly.  The story of the Iron Brigade  has been told.  It's pretty familiar.  They marched to Gettysburg on  the morning of July 1, 1863.  The Iron Brigade is made up of  the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin,  the 19th Indiana,  which were together from the  very beginning days of the war.  The brigade was reinforced by  the 24th Michigan   after the Battle of Antietum  in September, 1862.  So the new guys  are the Michigan guys.  They were more Michigan soldiers  when they came to join the Army  than there were in the four  regiments. 

 And of course, they felt very  out of place.  They had just been issued their  black hats in the weeks before  Gettysburg.  The black hats made the  Wisconsin men famous.  They were singled out in the  Army for a couple of reasons.  One is that they were the only  all-western brigade.  And we're all westerners, by the  way, under that definition.  All western brigade in the Army,  the Potomac.  When their gray uniforms sent by  the state began to break down,  the government went into the  federal stores to re-issue  uniforms.  Now, all those Yankee regiments  from New York, Pennsylvania,  and New Jersey, and all those  strange places that I don't want  to go anymore, were issued those  snappy flat caps,  because General McClellan  liked them so.  But there weren't enough of  those caps to go around. 

 So they went into the  quartermaster stores and they  found the old, outdated dress  hats of the US Regular, a big,  flat pilgrim style cap, made out  of black felt.  They were also issued the dress  coats of the US Regulars, which  is a nine-button knee-length  frock coat, with a padded vest.  Can you imagine wearing that in  90-degree weather, marching  around?  And at first, they got the caps  because there was nobody to  speak for them.  They weren't given the latest  equipment.  But the Wisconsin soldiers  tended to like those black hats,  because one soldier said it made  them as tall as giants.  When they marched across a  field, they looked, you know,  they were big, strapping  frontier regiment.  And it gave them a very good  look.  And they enjoyed that.  They began to be called the  Black Hat Brigade because of  those hats, because it made them  distinctive.  Among themselves, however, they  referred to themselves as the  Big Hats. 

 You very rarely see a reference  to the Black Hats among personal  correspondence.  They always said the Big Hats.  It was like this, the Big Hats  can outmarch anybody; the Big  Hats can shoot better; the Big  Hats are tougher than anybody,  and whatever.  They had a terrible time in the  east, because easterners didn't  have any sense of Wisconsin as a  frontier and what it was like.  So they would come up to these  Wisconsin kids, and they were  kids.  They were generally fairly  young.  They'd ask them questions like,  you know, do you sleep on the  ground at night?  You know, where do you hang the  scalps that you take?  And, can you shoot very well?  And of course, the Wisconsin  boys played into it very much.  Well, we can knock the eye out  of a gray squirrel at a thousand  yards.  (laughter)  You ask which eye.  And then they would ask  questions like, you know, what's  that strange animal in that  field. 

 The farmer would say, why that's  a cow.  And they'd say, oh, I thought we  only had buffalo in Wisconsin.  And it went on and on.  And the fact of the matter is  that most of them were from  Pennsylvania and New York, and  eastern states, and were out in  the frontier trying to make a  name for themselves.  So the fact that they were  westerners made them unique in  an Army of easterners.  It singled them out.  A 6th Wisconsin soldier from  Baraboo said that, "We felt  we were the test of the west,  and the eyes of the east  were on us."  Well, that puts a pretty heavy  burden on you when you're a  young soldier.  They wore the black hats.  It was at the Battle of South  Mountain in 1862, just before  the Battle of Antietum.  They were fighting their way up  the national road, under the  eyes of General McClellan, who  was commanding the Army at the  time. 

 And McClellan supposedly said,  at least this is the story he  liked to tell, he said, "Who are  those boys going up the road?"  And somebody said they're the  Western Brigade of John Gibben.  And he said, "Why, they fight  as if they are made of iron."  And of course, the story goes  back down, and pretty soon they  began to be known as the Iron  Brigade.  The Iron Brigade of the West.  There was a New York brigade  that called itself the Iron  Brigade as well.  After a march of 50 miles  in two days, their Colonel said,  "You boys must be made  of cast iron."  So the Wisconsin boys were  always quick to point out that  they were the Cast Iron Brigade,  and not the real Iron Brigade  of the West.  When they wrote about it,  immediately after the name was  given to them, they talked about  them in terms of they were  always identified as the Iron  Brigade of the West.  They were rarely, from the first  day, they want to be linked with  those guys.  We still have trouble.  There's a guy out in Maryland  today, a professor named Tom  Clemens, who goes around making  a ribbon claiming that the Iron  Brigade was really those New  Yorkers.  Ah, shameless fellow he is. 

 But professors are shameless  fellows!  (laughter)  So the Iron Brigade  is held out of the war  for almost a year, where they  were reserves in the Washington  reserves.  Ultimately, they went to  Fredericksburg, when McClellan  went to the peninsula.  They were horrified that they  were going to be out of the war  and never get to fire a shot.  And they wrote these letters  home, the war is over, we'll be  home soon, how are we going to  explain to mom and dad and to  the rest of the folks back home  that we never got into it.  Well, they got into it pretty  heavily.  They fought in four pitched  battles in the space of 21 days.  That's --, the second Bull Run,  South Mountain and Antietum.  In the course of that, they lost  50% of their membership.  By Gettysburg, there were  probably, the number, I distrust  all the numbers that you get,  because these are all clerks  putting them together, and the  numbers tend to be inflated.  They said they marched to  Gettysburg with 1,833 men. 

 That night of July 1, after  fighting most of the day, when  they rallied on the cemetery  ridge, the records say there  were only 671 left.  Think of that loss, almost 1,200  men down and dying and missing.  I think that number is false.  A quartermaster claimed that he  only fought 500 men that night  on the hill.  So they were pretty beat up.  A company of 50 or 60 men would  come in, there would be five or  six of them around the flag when  they finally reached the rally  point at Gettysburg.  So they played a key role in the  opening of the battle.  They were thrown into the fight  early in the morning.  They were northwest of town.  They were the only federal  infantry, among the only  federal. 

 There were other federal units  coming up at that time.  In the course of the morning,  they knocked down two brigades,  Archer's confederate brigade and  Joe Davis' confederate brigade.  Then in the afternoon, they  fought five other brigades in a  holding action, at a place  called Seminary Ridge and  MacPherson's Ridge, that lasted  almost four hours.  They were outnumbered three and  four to one at the time, and  were under the impression that  they had to hold out.  They believed that they were  holding, so the rest of the Army  could come up.  There was a mistake made at the  time.  In the mid-afternoon a rider  came up and told the general  commanding, who was Meredith at  the time, that they had to hold  the ridge.  They said they had to hold  Cemetery Ridge.  Now Cemetery Ridge is where the  rally point is south of town.  But the officer that brought  that command that they had to  hold Cemetery Ridge was German,  and his English was broken. 

 And the commanders of the Iron  Brigade thought he said Seminary  Ridge, which is where they were  fighting.  So they stayed long past the  time that they should have, and  only left that ridge when they  were literally chased off on the  run.  They lost a lot of soldiers in  that retreat from the ridge,  which is around the Lutheran  Seminary, into Gettysburg.  They had to pass through the  streets.  One soldier said that  confederates were firing at them  from one side of the street to  the other.  They finally reached Cemetery  Hill, where the Union Army had  gathered.  They were 400-500 of them left.  And General Winfield Scott  Hancock, who had taken command  of the Union Army at that point,  before General Mead came up,  ordered them to a place called  Culp's Hill, which is probably  the Fish Hook area.  As I said, when they got there  and actually counted up, there  weren't many of them left.  The 24th Michigan went into the  battle with 497 men, and they  counted 91 around their flag  that night. 

 The heaviest losses for any of  the federal regiments.  They were in the thick of  fighting in the afternoon.  So in effect, in the Battle of  Gettysburg, the Iron Brigade was  all but destroyed.  The regiments were re-filled  later.  It went up to big numbers,  600-700.  The regiment was supposed to  have a thousand men, but Civil  War regiments by Gettysburg  were 300-400 men.  And they were reinforced,  but it wasn't by the same  type of people.  You know, these volunteers from  the frontier towns all across  Indiana, Wisconsin and even  Michigan.  They didn't like the Michigan  at first.  They thought they enlisted for  bounty money, which is not true. 

 Michigan men had enlisted as  volunteers.  It was a big deal to be  a volunteer.  In other words, you went not for  any monetary gain, but because  of your patriotism to the  country.  They thought that the Michigan  guys brought way too stuff from  home.  They called them  the feather bedders.  (laughter)  They said they brought  everything from home, including  their kitchen sink and feather  beds.  But after the battle of  Gettysburg, there was no doubt  that the 24th Michigan had  earned its reputation.  So what about the Iron Brigade  today?  The Iron Brigade today is  probably more well known and  celebrated than it was at the  time of the Civil War.  There's a couple reasons for  that.  When the war ended, the boys  went back home to the west. 

 And most of the major unions  were held at Philadelphia,  Boston, New York and Washington.  Of course, all those eastern  soldiers liked to talk about  what they did at the Battle of  Gettysburg.  So as a result, the Wisconsin,  Indiana and Michigan men always  felt that they were not getting  the attention that they should  have.  Everybody was talking about the  Vermont Brigade, or the New York  Brigade, or the Irish Brigade,  but very few people paid much  attention to a ragtag bunch of  people in strange old black  hats, living in funny places  called Baraboo, Wonewoc and  Mauston.  They first came to public  attention, really, after 1890.  Rufus Dawes of the 6th  Wisconsin wrote his first  memoir, "Service with the 6th  Wisconsin Volunteers," and was  published in 1890.  That's quite a bit after the  war.  It was the first book published  on an Iron Brigade regiment.  And if you haven't read it, it  may be the best memoir by a  soldier in the Civil War, at  least in my opinion.  O.B. Curtis added the "History  of the 24th Michigan"  the next year. 

 Philip Cheek and Mair Pointon  wrote a book called "Sauk County  Riflemen" about Company A of the  6th Wisconsin.  But it was really Bruce Catton,  the historian in the 1950s, who  brought attention to the Iron  Brigade when he began to use  Dawes' memoir and the Sauk  County Riflemen's memoir, and  the Michigan memoir, and wrote  about the Black Hat Brigade in  his books, "Glory Road,"  "A Stillness at Applomattox,"  and of course, the book  I like best of all is  "Mr. Lincoln's Army."  In 1961, an Indiana man  by the name of Alan Nolan  wrote a book called  "The Iron Brigade" on  very simply, the Iron Brigade.  And he wrote a very powerful  standard history of the brigade  that brought them more to public  attention.  And in that period, a number of  other writers, including myself,  have added to the Iron Brigade's  story, mainly because it's such  a rich and wonderful story, and  because it has so much  relevance.  When I began to research the  Iron Brigade, I found that none  of the historians were looking  in the repositories in the  Midwest.  You know, if you're going to  write about Gettysburg, you  don't go to Wisconsin to look  for it.  Wisconsin's soldiers fall at  Gettysburg, and all these  places, and there's this  wonderful wealth of material.  And it was added to, because  they felt that they were  slighted.  They were writing to each other,  telling what they did.  They exchanged things. 

 And they never got a lot of  attention out east.  I did a seminar three years ago,  to a crowd about as big as this,  at Seminary Ridge.  That's where they fought on that  July 1 day.  And I asked how many had been  out to the Iron Brigade site,  which was slightly west of the  Seminary.  And out of a group this large,  probably 12 or 15 people raised  their hand.  All these Civil War buffs who  were coming to conferences had  never been out to the look at  the first day's fighting.  There's a reason for that, I  think.  I mean, I don't think that's any  kind of a slippery thing.  I think what happened is that  the writings of eastern  regiments and the fact that they  were from the east really led  them to places of the second day  of the battle, and of course,  the third day, with the final  charge.  And along comes this wonderful  book, "Killer Angels," and  Joshua Chamberlain, who becomes  this folk figure because he  writes so well about the war. 

 I'm going to be a little cranky  now.  The 20th Main, did not suffer a  lot of casualties in that  battle.  All the Wisconsin regiments in  the first two hours of fighting,  lost more men than the 20th Main  did in their whole action.  But it's overlooked because one,  it was a defeat for the Union  Army, and two, most of the  regiments that got a lot of  attention ended up on the second  or third day.  So when I started to go into  this whole thing of looking  through the records on Wisconsin  and the Battle of Gettysburg, I  had written a book called "In  the Bloody Railroad Cut at  Gettysburg," with my friend,  William JK Beadot in 1990.  That's something.  Gosh, it seems like yesterday.  My life is sliding away.  And I never had thought about  going back to do Gettysburg.  You know, Gettysburg, I had done  some of the Iron Brigade at  Gettysburg, and I had no  intention to go back. 

 And people kept sending me  stuff.  I was the director of the Civil  War Institute at Carroll at the  time.  All of a sudden, I started  getting letters and copies of  journals, and pictures would  come in.  A lot of them dealt with Iron  Brigade regiments.  And we kept a file of all these  letters and documents.  Now, I had this box full of  stuff.  I was telling this to a friend  of mine, I said, gee, I've got  all this wonderful material on  Gettysburg that's never been  used, that families have sent  me.  And I was talking to a guy, some  of you know out there, Charlie  Foster, who was a big collector.  And he said to me, you know,  Lance, if you don't write about  these guys at Gettysburg, all  that material will be lost  forever.  And it will never, you know,  they'll be forgotten. 

 I said, well, thanks a lot,  Charlie, lay a real load on me.  So I kept plucking away at this  history of the Iron Brigade at  Gettysburg.  This is the first book length  copy of it.  And in research, I came across  something very interesting.  I was in the Chicago Public  Library.  And they had some Iron Brigade  stuff, but just a couple letters  from people.  And the lady said, you know, we  have a pretty good file on the  Grand Army of the Republic.  So, bring that out, I'll take a  look at it.  In the Chicago Public Library,  now what the hell is it doing  down there?  I started going through it.  And in it were these photographs  labeled the headquarters camp at  the 50th anniversary of  Gettysburg, the Iron Brigade. 

 And a guy named Charlie  McConnell, of the 24th Michigan,  had erected a huge tent, bigger  than this room, on the  Battlefield of Gettysburg during  the 50th anniversary.  And in that pile of stuff were  letters from him, documents and  newspaper clippings, and these  photographs of the Vets at  Gettysburg, in the Iron Brigade  reunion tent.  The tent, of all things, was  dedicated to the 24th Michigan  and the 26th North Carolina.  Those were the two regiments  that came head to head in the  afternoon, and just fought a  horrific fight.  They fought at ranges of 90 feet  apart, in two lines, almost for  a half hour of steady fighting.  And of course, both regiments  were shot to pieces.  I think that's the heaviest  infantry fighting in a war,  in that space of an hour,  before the 24th Michigan  is pulled off the ridge.  The reason that Charlie  McConnell put up this tent  was kind of strange.  He was a young corporal in the  24th Michigan at Gettysburg.  He was a printer out of Detroit. 

 And just before they fled from  Seminary Ridge, Charlie had one  cartridge left.  And he said, Captain, I've got  one round left, and I'm going to  make it count.  He wrote this, now.  Charlie probably embellished  this a little.  And the captain says, Charles,  Charles he called him, not  Charlie.  He said, Charles, you see that  splendid fellow carrying the  rebel flag, he said, take a shot  at him.  And Charlie says, by God, I  will.  By the eternal, I'll put him  down.  He said that.  So he leaned against his friend  to get a steady aim, he fires  and the flag bearer goes down. 

 He said, then we ran for the  town, just ahead of the rebel  line.  Well, he never got over it.  So Charlie became rich, moved to  Chicago, where he sold retail  drugs.  And so, that's how the stuff  ended up in the Chicago Public  Library.  So around the time, he gets to  be 40 or 50 years old, and  suddenly these days when he was  a young soldier, he was the  color bearer of the 24th  Michigan the rest of the war.  And in fact, he was in the Honor  Guard for Lincoln's funeral in  Springfield, with the 24th  Michigan.  You know, that's a big deal for  you.  You're 21 years old, and you're  in the Battle of Gettysburg.  And he began to seek out people,  and he would tell the story  about how he was on the ridge.  And he was in Richmond on  business, and talking to an  ex-confederate. 

 And the confederate says, well,  you've got to see John -- in  North Carolina.  He said, because his brother was  killed with the 26th  North Carolina.  And so, Charlie said, well,  I'll do that.  And he gets an invitation  to go down.  And he visits this brother  of a colonel of the 26th.  There's a couple of confederates  there, and Charlie tells this  story.  And the brother smiles and says,  well, you shot Colonel Jim Lane,  who is standing right here.  So Charlie says, holy cow, you  know, here's the guy he shot.  He thought he had killed him.  And Lane's got this big beard. 

 He pulls his beard up and shows  where the bullet went through  his neck.  (laughter)  This is all in these letters  and newspaper accounts.  They took him all over the  place, and around this town, to  show him where the regiment was  raised, and show him all of  this.  Lane and him are best friends.  Charlie said, thank God my hand  was spared and I didn't kill  this gallant soldier.  So they agreed to meet at  Gettysburg on the 40th  anniversary, which is 1903.  When they get there and have  their pictures taken.  All these photographs are in  this file.  You know, it took me a while to  figure out who was who.  When you read through the  documentation and newspaper  accounts, you quickly realized  what was going on. 

 And Charlie said, so Charlie  accompanies Lane to a reunion on  the 40th of Gettysburg.  And Lane speaks to a crowd of  several thousand confederate  veterans.  And he begins the story, a great  beginning.  He says, when I was young, I was  a soldier and I fought on this  field.  He then began to tell the story  of how he came on the field.  Then he tells how five of their  color bearers have been shot.  And finally, he picked up the  flag himself, and he turned back  to call his men forward when he  was shot.  Down he fell.  And then he grabs Charlie, who  was standing next to him, pulls  him over and said, this is  the man who shot me!  (laughter)  Man, you know, thousands  of confederates,  I'd have run for it, right?  (laughter)  But of course, Charlie gets all,  you know, glad to see you, glad  I didn't kill you.  And it's this wonderful reunion  thing. 

 And it's the last time they  meet, because Lane dies before  the 50th.  But when Charlie comes, he's the  Illinois representative of the  state for the reunion at  Gettysburg in 1913.  He puts this big tent up.  He takes all these photographs.  He said 1,400 people a day  visited that tent.  And they had all sorts of  entertainment.  They had the Soldiers Fiddlers  Society, the Blue and Gray  Fiddlers, two confederate  fiddlers and two Yankee  fiddlers, if you can imagine  that.  And they played the old songs  and sang.  They had a wonderful time.  It's in the book. 

 There's a list of all the people  who registered at his tent.  They're from all over, all sorts  of different individuals.  So Charlie had a wonderful time.  He hosts another reunion of the  Iron Brigade at Detroit right  after that time.  He said it was the last one, and  this is going to be a lot of  fun, and everyone should come.  And he promises the confederate  guys that he's going to build a  $50,000 monument at Gettysburg,  dedicated to the 24th Michigan  Armed Brigade and the 26th North  Carolina Brigade.  But you know, he dies before he  gets it into his will.  Charlie was famous.  He made fortunes and lost them  like every four years.  He'd get rich and went up and  down. 

 He was good at making money.  So when they wrote his obit,  they said, you know, Charlie  McConnell, a well-known retail  and wholesale druggist died such  and such a time.  They said he was known for  having made several fortunes and  losing them as fast as he made  them.  And there was no mention at all  of his service with the Iron  Brigade or his reunion, or all  of that.  So it was all lost.  That was one of the things that  I found in that.  It was a pretty touching story.  And I kind of feel sorry for  Charlie McConnell.  He wrote one account of the  battle, and it's pretty fanciful  if you read it.  He's single handedly holding the  whole Confederate Army. 

 (laughter)  But he wrote in that article,  he said the basic reason the  he thought that the attention of  the Iron Brigade never got a lot  of renown, right after the war,  is he says is because it was  a losing battle.  And nobody liked to write about  being whipped.  So he went on.  And of course, a lot of  veterans went back to Gettysburg  after the war, went there to see  where they had been shot, and  all of that.  So it's a pretty wonderful  story.  I hope you all buy the book,  just because it's fun to read  and to get a connection to these  guys.  So tonight, I have an assignment  for you.  I always give my classes an  assignment.  And I expect you to do it, as  well.  When you're falling asleep, you  know, there's that wonderful  period when you're laying there  just drifting off, thinking  about the day's events. 

 Well, you should probably think  about this story of Charlie  McConnell, and how he shot that  color bearer at Gettysburg, and  how he ended up putting up this  wonderful tent at Gettysburg,  and how he was so struck by his  service at Gettysburg.  I want you to say a silent  prayer for him, because I don't  think there's many people  praying for Charlie McConnell  any more.  The Battlefield of Gettysburg is  a wonderful place to visit.  I hope you all get to see it.  If you haven't, and I hope you  all go out to the first day's  fighting, and look at the  wonderful monuments.  It's starting to have a little  erosion now, because of acid  rain and some things.  But they're still fairly clear.  I should do a caution for you.  The battlefield has changed  because they put a road through  it.  And when you go there, you get a  sense of how they fought, but  it's not quite as clear. 

 So you have to literally walk  through the woods and jump over  the trees.  And if you find any bullets on  the ground, that have been shot  in the battle and fell out of  old trees, give them to me.  (laughter)  Thank you very much.  (applause)  I'd be happy to answer three  or four easy questions.  And I'll be happy to sign  any books that flopping around.  If you haven't bought yours,  run and buy it now.  I'll stay until all is gone.  All right, who was asking  a question in the back?  Okay, you've got to speak up,  because I can't hear very well.  >> Lance, has any part of this  story been modified by the  re-interpretation of the  Gettysburg Battlefield, which  has been going on recently?  >> Are you talking about the  story of Gettysburg, the more  politically correct version of  it?  >> I hear talk about how the  historians have re-interpreted  the Gettysburg Battlefield.  >> There's been a lot of that. 

 It's based almost entirely on  primary sources, written by guys  that were there.  If there's a flaw in it, it's  that I tend to accept the  stories more at face value than  I should.  There's a lot of people that say  you should have three versions  of the story before you believe  it, and all that.  But I didn't want to do that,  because I really wanted to get a  sense of these old guys, how  they remembered Gettysburg, and  how it affected them.  So if that's the criticism, I  will argue against it, yeah.  The new interpretation of  Gettysburg involves Lincoln.  It involves abolitionism.  It involves the big cause,  fighting for slavery.  The story of the slavery thing  is an interesting concept.  In my book, I wrote about the  reaction of Wisconsin soldiers  to slavery. 

 You know, a lot of the kids had  never seen slavery.  And they were pretty ambivalent  about it.  They weren't.  Some were abolitionists.  Some saw it as an evil.  But most of them didn't really  care much, one way or another.  Until it began, as the war goes  on, they get a sense of the  unfairness of the system, which  I found was interesting.  One guy's writing, and he says,  here's this black carpenter, you  know, and all of his labors  benefit his master.  And he sees none of the benefit  of his work.  And they thought that was not  right. 

 That was not right.  He's not that much darker than  half the guys in my regiment.  And so they begin to evolve into  a real opposition to slavery.  Not at first, but if you read  through the letters, they become  much more anti-slave, and they  really, really, really want to  destroy slavery, because they  think it'll end the war, and you  know, preserve the Union.  >> So how does that impact the  interpretation of the  battlefield?  >> How does it impact it?  >> When you say it's being  re-interpreted.  >> I'm not sure what I'm writing  does impact on the  interpretation of the  battlefield.  I think what they're writing now  is trying to make it more  politically correct.  And they're trying to put it  in much larger contexts.  I'm always going to get  in trouble with this.  But I'll say what I'm going to  say anyway. 

 And I'll deny I said it.  (laughter)  I think what happens is that the  war ends.  At first, everybody's kind of  happy that the Union's been  preserved and the war is over.  But then they begin to look  around and they begin to look at  the cost.  You know, 600,000 men die, and  all of the damage, and things  that went on.  And the soldiers, especially the  Union soldiers, almost had an  emotional need to have a reason  for that happening.  I mean, how do you justify the  cost.  Was the saving of the Union  worth what happened?  Maybe, maybe not.  And it is at that point they  really buy into the concept  emotionally, and probably  correctly so, that the war was  ultimately the end of slavery  and of secession.  You know, the threat of  secession is a pretty serious  thing, too, that anybody can  walk out of the Union. 

 Wisconsin tried to secede from  the Union before the Civil War,  in the fugitive slave war.  We almost declared war on the  United States.  I think we ought to do that  again.  (laughter)  Did I answer that enough?  I'm not sure there's a good  answer for it.  (indistinct talking)  >> Do we know the nationality  of the majority of  the Iron Brigade people?  What nationality were they?  The majority, were they German?  Were they English?  Norwegian?  >> They were a little bit  of everything.  A lot of Yankee stock.  You've heard the expression  Native Americans are of English  descent, people who settled  the country early?  Probably the majority were  of New England, New York,  and English descent.  A lot of Irish.  Then a big bulge of Germans  come in in that period,  when the 48ers came in, and  began to see that.  You also have a large number of  French Canadians. 

 Now, what's a French Canadian?  Native Americans were not  allowed to join the Army.  So you have this whole culture,  for years, of mixed culture  in the northern part of the  state of Native Americans and  French, right?  From the old fur trapping days.  So to enlist, these mixed  bloods, or Metis, began to call  themselves French Canadians.  So you've got this funny spike,  you know, Germans, and all of a  sudden, French Canadians.  Where the hell do they come  from?  (laughter)  Well, I know.  And I have tracked at least five  or six African Americans who  served in the Iron Brigade  regiments, as soldiers, not as  cooks.  They actually enlisted, and  served.  One of them was killed.  One of them was wounded.  One mustered out. 

 And they just overlooked it.  They wouldn't write about it  because he was illegal.  Wisconsin's a funny place.  You've got this social thing  going on.  You've got all these mixed  people.  It's not like back east.  Here, you've got you know,  Ojibwas, French.  You've got Germans.  You've got Irish.  You've got immigrants. 

 You've got Norwegians and God  knows what else.  And they all, you know, are  trying to get along on the  frontier.  It's a soup, a wonderful soup.  I'm always in trouble for this,  too.  I think it's the first real  Americans, because where you  have this mix of different  cultures and peoples coming  together and creating a whole  new type of people.  I think Lincoln is the result of  that, in some ways.  He grew up in that kind of  culture.  I probably can't defend that,  and some historian will stab me  in the heart and kill me for  heresy.  But the heck with it.  Yes?  >> As a follow-up to that, when  I was in Gettysburg a couple  years ago, I met a battlefield  guide whose researching a woman  who fought in the Iron Brigade,  either the 2nd or the 6th, was  wounded there, shipped back to  Chicago, and was found out to be  a woman, and was treated as a  hero. 

 She came back to the Madison  area, apparently re-enlisted.  >> She's actually from the 7th  Wisconsin.  >> All right.  >> That whole story's based on a  newspaper clipping of about 75  words.  And it suddenly becomes whole  cloth, because it's fascinating,  and a little glimpse.  I'm sure, they argue whether  there were about 400 women who  served in units in past as  soldiers.  I think that number is a lot  higher.  But there's no way to ever prove  it.  It's like trying to run down  Native Americans.  When they enlisted, they tended  to, you know, these Army clerks  can't write down Ojibwa names,  and all that. 

 So they call them John Smith,  Frank Smith, Henry Smith, or  whatever.  Well go ahead.  >> John Burns.  >> John Burns?  >> Yeah, whatever happened to  him?  >> I touch on that in the book.  I spent a long time reading  other people's literature.  There are so many damn stories,  I can't figure out which one is  true and what isn't.  So I used all of them.  (laughter)  Because they're delightful  stories.  He fights with the Iron Brigade  part of the time.  And there was a lot of eye  witness accounts from five or  six different soldiers in the  7th and one in the 2nd, as well  as some Pennsylvanians and  others. 

 But in the course of that, I  think he was there.  I think that whole story became  romanced, to use a polite term.  And I think Burns romanced it,  as well.  I like John Burns.  I'm about his age, and ready to  tip my musket and go out and  take a shot at the damn  Johnnies, wouldn't you?  He was mad.  That's a good story.  There's a good book by a guy  named Tim Smith.  It's just a thin little book  that they sell at Gettysburg,  which really, really examines  all the arguments one way or the  other.  He couldn't reach any  conclusions either.  Well, you've been very kind. 

 Thank you very much.  I'm so happy we got a chance to  talk.  (applause)