Company D, Stoughton Light Guard – read more  

The Stoughton Light Guard was the proud name the young men gave their new unit when they enlisted on Aug. 10, 1861, for three years service in the Union army. 

At their training ground in Camp Randall, Madison, they were designated Company D of the Seventh Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment, but before a year was out, they and their new comrades would earn the most famous unit name in the Union armies:  The Iron Brigade.  *(The Iron Brigade initially consisted of the 2nd, 6th, and 7th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiments, the 19th Indiana, Battery B of the 4th U.S. Light Artillery, and was later joined by the 24th Michigan.) 

Excerpts are a portion of the Stoughton Courier Hub Syttende Mai insert, Section One, May 12, 1994
The name was hard-earned and well-deserved.  According to Pulitzer-Prize winning historian T. Harry Williams, “It was probably the best fighting brigade in the army.  Certainly army and corps commanders recognized its quality and came increasingly to call on it when the going was tough.  As a sad mark of this reliance, the brigade could count at the end of the war a greater proportion of its men killed in battle than could any other federal brigade.”

Fortunately, these young men did not know what awaited them that hot August day when they took their oaths.  They were merely answering their state’s call for volunteers to put down the rebellion of the southern states and thus preserve the Union. The roster shows the overwhelmingly local character of the Stoughton Light Guard: James Adair from Stoughton, Charles Bean from Pleasant Springs, James Best from Rutland, Luke Blount from Door Creek, Alonzo Buck from Dunkirk, Philo Buckman from Stoughton, Andre Campbell from Utica . . . 

The roster also shows the terrible price they paid . . . But all that lay ahead.  

After getting uniforms and equipment and some military training at Camp Randall, the Seventh Wisconsin boarded trains for Chicago and the east, where they joined the Army of the Potomac, the force that was protecting the Capitol from Robert E. Lee and his seemingly invincible rebel army. 

When the Seventh Wisconsin arrived in Washington on Oct 1, it joined the Second and Sixth Wisconsin and the 19th Indiana to form a brigade under General Rufus King.  The fall and winter were spent in camp near Washington, where the men drilled for endless hours, mastering the intricacies of movement by files and columns. 

They also got to know their new comrades, learn the ways of army life and brood about the inevitable baptism of fire to come, when they must first stand up to the enemy’s bullets and cannonballs. 

The Stoughton Historical Museum has a letter from Philo Buckman to his brother, Fred, in which he noted that even in the first battle some men must fall, and he feels he may be that one.”

“Before that ominous first battle, the brigade received a new commander, John Gibbon, a West Point graduate and veteran of the pre-war regular army. 

Recognizing that he had the only all-western brigade in the eastern army, Gibbon decided to use that uniqueness as a morale builder, and gave his new troops the high black hat of the old regular army rather than the low slouch caps that had become standard Union issue. 

The hats worked, setting the brigade apart from the rest of the army, making the Westerners seem taller and making them instantly recognizable, both to friend and foe.

It was good that these untested troops had high morale and thorough drilling, for their first battle would be as fierce as any new unit ever faced. 

After driving the main Union army away from Richmond in June and July 1862, in the Peninsular campaign, Lee rapidly shifted his army north to threaten Washington. 

Gibbon’s brigade was one of the few units available and was sent to delay Lee until the rest of the army could be transported northward from below Richmond.  

First they had to find Lee.  One wing of his army under Stonewall Jackson had raided a federal supply depot at Centreville, Virginia, and then disappeared from the map.  This force, more than 15,000 strong, was now to the west of Centerville, secluded in a hilltop position over-looking the Warrentown turnpike near Gainsville. 

And on the quiet summer evening of Aug. 28, 1862, the Stoughton company and their 2,000 comrades of Gibbon’s brigade came marching.

When Jackson saw the unsuspecting Federals approaching, he set a trap, assembling a battle line of 6,400 veteran troops.  At 7 p.m., with Gibbon’s men strung out along the road in his front, Jackson sent his troops forward. 

Gibbon immediately ordered his men to form a line of battle against the threat, and the year of drilling paid off as the brigade quickly shifted into battle formation.  At a distance of 75 yards, both sides opened fire, starting a stand-up confrontation that would continue without respite for the next two hours.  Generals on both sides called it some of the fiercest fire they ever experienced, and the casualty figures bear them out. 

Gibbon counted 133 dead, 539 wounded and 79 missing, for total casualties in excess of 33 percent.  Confederate losses were equally devastating, with 2,200 killed or wounded, including most of the commanders.”

“Since both sides held their ground until darkness ended the battle, it is generally considered a draw.  But for one untested brigade to slug it out on even terms with an entire veterans corps says something for the quality of “those black hatted fellows” as the Confederates now respectfully called them. 

And the veteran General Gibbon, who had described his command as “green troops” in his previous reports, now began to refer to them as the brigade “I have the honor to command”.   

Excerpts are a portion of the Stoughton Courier Hub Syttende Mai insert, Section One, May 12, 1994