Author Description

Four Years in the Iron Brigade is the recently discovered journal of William Ray of the Seventh Wisconsin. It is the most important primary source ever discovered of soldier life in one of the war's most famous fighting organizations. No other collection of letters or diaries come close to it. Two days before his regiment left Wisconsin in 1861, the 23-year-old blacksmith began, as he described it, "to keep account" of his life in what became the "Iron Brigade of the West". Readers and critics alike will agree he succeeded admirably. Ray's journal encompasses all aspects of the life of an enlisted man in the Army of the Potomac -- the hardship, disease, comradeship, and battles. And Ray saw most of the war from the front rank. He was wounded at Second Bull Run, again at Gettysburg, and yet a third time in the horrific hell of the Wilderness. He penned something in his journal almost every day, sometimes just a few lines, and other times thousands of words. His candid assessments of officers and strategy, vivid descriptions of marches and the fighting, and stories of foraging and daily army life fill a large gap in the historical record of the Seventh Wisconsin and the celebrated Iron Brigade.