"McClellan and Hooker have seen many units fight battles. These soldiers under General Gibbon are tough, tough as iron, and they say so. The name sticks. Gibbon's brigade earned their name, forever after the "Iron Brigade", in the bloody darkness on the slopes of Turner's Gap, along both sides of the winding National Road, on a Sunday evening, September 14, 1862."
To My Best Girl, p. 152