"Exciting and even moving, this book successfully personalizes the history of the Brigade's formative months and enriches our understanding of how these men felt and lived—and became distinguished soldiers." —Alan T. Nolan, author of The Iron Brigade and Lee Reconsidered

"A colorful and skillful record of the lives of the men in the ranks of a famous brigade, who served and saved the Union at a great sacrifice in a dark time." —Kirkus Reviews

"Well-written and researched . . . Excellent first-hand accounts of the brigade in action from letters, memoirs, diaries and other sources of the brigade members are included." —The Civil War Courier

"Sound research in unpublished materials allowed the author to impart a freshness to his descriptions of fighting at the Brawner Farm, South Mountain . . . and Antietam." —Civil War

No volunteers tramped with more innocent resolve on the drill fields of 1861 than the farmers, immigrants, shopkeepers, and "piney" camp boys who volunteered for the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Wisconsin and the Nineteenth Indiana Infantry. The Men Stood Like Iron is the moving, often melancholy, story of how the backwoods "Calico boys" became soldiers of the celebrated "Iron Brigade."