The values of two young brothers raised in a religious household are affirmed and destroyed by combat in the Civil War's most famous unit, the Iron Brigade. Describing the battles of Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, and the Wilderness in letters and frank journal entries, each of the boys become men for better and for worse. At the fiftieth reunion of the Battle of Gettysburg, the surviving brother bitterly sums up the meaning of the war and bequeaths its mixed results to our generation.