Organization and Early Battles
The "Old Brigade" served from 1861 to 1865 and was one of two brigades from Vermont, both famous in their own right.
The First Vermont Brigade was organized in October 1861, primarily through the efforts of Maj. Gen. William F. "Baldy" Smith. It was composed of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Vermont Infantry regiments, which had been individually mustered into service between June and September, for a time, it also included the 26th New Jersey Infantry. Its first commander was Brig. Gen. William T. H. Brooks. In April 1862, the brigade was incorporated into the Army of the Potomac as the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division, VI Corps, and first saw action during Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign in the battles of Williamsburg and Savage's Station. It later was present at Antietam and Fredericksburg. Under the command of Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Grant, the Vermonters fought in the campaign culminating in the Chancellorsville. The Vermonters participated in VI Corps' capture of Marye's Heights in the Second Battle of Fredericksburg and then were prominent in the fighting at Salem Church. They were held in reserve during the Battle of Gettysburg, holding a flank guard position behind Big Round Top, losing only one man wounded. After the Gettysburg Campaign, elements of the Vermont Brigade were sent to help quell the draft riots in New York City.
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“These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were,—if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)