"Put the Vermonters ahead" was the order of the Union's VI Corps commander, Major General John Sedgwick, to his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Martin T. McMahon on the march to Gettysburg. Never driven from the field, the 1st Vermont Brigade always held its line and never lost its flags in battle. Marching more than two thousand miles in its many campaigns, this brigade had the greatest loss of life of all the brigades in the United States Army.

In four long years of war, the Vermont Brigade held at Savage Station, White Oak Swamp, Banks' Ford, Funkstown, and Charlestown. In the fierce fighting in Grant's 1864 overland campaign, this heroic unit suffered some of its heaviest losses and won some of its greatest victories.

In 1864 the Vermonters were rushed to the defense of the capital during Jubal Early's raid on Washington. They were then sent on to the Shenandoah Valley. In the last months of the war, they were the first to break Lee's lines at Petersburg, going on to join the pursuit of Lee's dying army, which ended at Appomattox.