and trained together, and fortunately this was approved by General McClellan.  The Green Mountain men had won great renown in the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars by virtue of their state organization and services and the marked individuality which characterized them.  It was a happy thought to keep them together during the Civil War.  The sequel showed that it was not only highly beneficial to the national cause, but that it added greatly to the fame of the Vermont men.

As the war was a sectional one in its origin, many of our best officers believed that the volunteer regiments should be formed into brigades and divisions, without reference to the States from which they came.  They held that an army organized in this way would more rapidly develop the national spirit and become a more efficient military machine than one formed on state or sectional lines, and the general practice to the end of the war, in the Union army, was in accordance with this idea.

The Vermont brigade, composed of the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Vermont Regiments, was the one notable exception to this practice and the result was in every way satisfactory.  It preserved its identity till the end of the war and became famous as one of the best and most distinctive organizations that ever upheld the Union cause.  It was composed almost entirely of native Vermont men, racy of the soil, hardy, self-reliant and courageous, and always ready for the serious business of warfare.  It owned its early and enduring discipline to Smith, who was appointed Brigadier General on the 13th of August, and from that time forth it never ceased to have a place in his affections.  From the first he took a special pride in his regiment, and devoted himself earnestly to its instruction and discipline, for the perfection of which it soon became noted, but in those days of rapid changes, when the loyal states were sending forth their volunteers by the hundred thousand, brigades soon grew into divisions, and divisions into army-corps and armies.

General Smith was then at exactly the right age, and had already achieved such a high reputation as a scientific and competent soldier, that he was called upon after only a few weeks’ service as a brigade commander to take charge of a division of three brigades.  Looking about him with anxious care for a suitable successor, he assigned the Vermont Brigade to the command of Brigadier General William T.H.  Brooks, a graduate of West Point from Ohio, but a grandson of Vermont.  He was a veteran of the Mexican and Indian Wars, in which he had gained great experience, and from which he became justly famous as one of the finest soldiers of his time.  A man of striking countenance, great physical vigor and dauntless courage, he was an ideal leader of the Vermont men and at once won their confidence and respect.  It is one of the traditions of the times that under him “The Iron Brigade,” as it soon came to be known throughout