Now, an officer noted, only some 2,800 soldiers remained in the 40 companies. The four regiments brought 4,000 men to Washington the previous year, but even though fighting at Brawner’s Farm, South Mountain, Antietam, and Gettysburg lay in the future, transfers, other duties, desertions, and disease had reduced the brigade numbers. The boys call it putting on French airs.” And whatever the General says we must have, we must take it or be arrested…. It’s a dime for this and a quarter for that and so it goes. “The officers, a Badger wrote in his journal, “are coming right down on us as if we were so many slaves now and they are forcing leggings and blouse coats on us and forcing us to wear them. It was a showy black felt affair, looped up on the side with a brass eagle and trimmed with an infantry-blue cord, black plume, brass infantry bugle, company letter and regimental numeral. The new black hat made the biggest impression. Amazingly, he made it through the war with nary a scratch. Wheeler enlisted as a 20-year-old private, but rose through the ranks and was discharged as a lieutenant in 1865. Cornelius Wheeler of the 2nd Wisconsin wears his at a perfectly cocky angle. “The boys no longer look like beggars, with ventilated suits of clothing, but present a very neat, tidy and soldier-like appearance,” one Badger reported. The new issue included dark or light blue wool trousers, a dark blue nine-button frock coat, and the Model 1858 black felt hat of the kind worn by the Regular Army. The changeover was generally completed by May 1862 at Fredericksburg. The changeover to Federal blue started in late summer 1861, in the Washington camps, first in the various companies of the ragged and needy 2nd Wisconsin where the boys were still wearing the uniforms of First Bull Run. As did many of the early Federal regiments, the Wisconsin and Indiana units arrived at Washington in 1861 in uniforms of state militia gray. The Regular Army officer tightened up discipline and drill and also ordered new uniforms for his men. With brothers in the Confederate service, his loyalty was questioned, and his Old Army discipline and manner made him the most hated man in the brigade. In ranks, Gibbon was regarded at first as an artillery officer who never commanded infantry. Adding to the dismay was the discovery the white gloves and linen leggings Gibbon added to the brigade uniform had to be paid out of the individual clothing allotments. The new general was a Regular and West Pointer, after all, and the volunteer citizen soldiers were distrustful of Regulars. Gibbon had been promoted to brigadier general of volunteers in May 1862 from his Battery B, 4th U. “Our regiment has been more than a year in service, and in soldierly bearing, perfection in drill, and discipline, we do not yield the palm to the regulars in any service.” Part of that “perfection” in drill was due to the advent of John Gibbon as the brigade’s new commander during its stay in Fredericksburg. “Of course, we feel eager to be something more than ornamental file-closers,” a frustrated Wisconsin officer wrote home. The brigade had been together since mid-summer of the previous year and-except for the 2nd Wisconsin, which fought at First Bull Run-saw only scattered and limited engagements with the enemy over the past months. McDowell’s men had been sent to the colonial town, which a member of the 7th Wisconsin called the “greatest old foggy place I ever saw,” and placed in a position so they could either reinforce the Army of the Potomac’s Peninsula Campaign, or rush back to Washington, D.C., and protect the capital if necessary. Irvin McDowell’s Department of the Rappahannock. The western soldiers had marched into the Fredericksburg area in mid April, first passing through Falmouth on the north bank of the Rappahannock as some of the 20,000 troops in Maj. It was the only infantry unit composed of regiments from the frontier West serving in the East, and was part of a force being held at Fredericksburg to protect central Virginia. The two soldiers were part of a brigade that included the 2nd, 6th, 7th Wisconsin, and 19th Indiana along with Battery B of the 4th U.S. The fact is somebody has got to stay here in case of a reverse to McClellan the rebels could march on to Washington without opposition.” We have been expecting that we would be taken down to reinforced McClellan but at present it looks as if we were elected to stay where we are for some time to come. Of the current military situation, he wrote: “We are still laying on the north bank of the Rappahannock having an easy time of it. John Gibbon gave the Midwestern regiments a good dose of discipline as well as their distinctive look of dress coats and hats, and the disliked white leggings. Party Like it's 1862: The Black Hat Brigade's Raucous Party Along the Rappahannock Close
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