I'm sure the Wilcox Brigade and the 9th Alabama would have been more than happy to have been referred to as a fierce attacking, hand-to-hand fighting force. In reality they were not any better or worse than most brigades. Their brightest moments were probably Gaine's Mill, Salem Church, and the Battle of the Crater. Gettysburg would have been a bright moment if they had won: they showed their valor fighting under frustrating conditions caused by the Confederate high command. Who knows how bright their moment might have been on July 1 had Robert E. Lee sent Anderson's Division (and the Wilcox Brigade) against Cemetery Hill, instead of sending them into camp towards the end of the fighting; or if on July 3 the Wilcox Brigade had been sent to reinforce Pickett (as it was supposed to have been) just after Pickett advanced, and not 20-30 minutes later when it was too late. Their low moments: Frazier's Farm and Sharpsburg.

The Brigade often fought without all of its regiments either at the scene or without their being actually engaged- especially after Gettysburg. The 9th Alabama, for instance, was not engaged as the rest of the Brigade was thrown into the Mule Shoe at Spotsylvania; most of the Brigade was in line and under bombardment during the Mine Run Campaign, but were not part of the actual fighting. I don't know if brigades were given planned rest periods after heavy losses, or if Lee was just going with the units that had the most men fit for duty.

Had the Wilcox Brigade continued at their 1862-1863 pace, there would have been nothing left of them by the time they got to Petersburg. The Wilcox Brigade took 1,055 casualties in just 2 battles on the Peninsula: Gaine's Mill and Frazier's Farm (Glendale). The 9th Alabama Regiment alone went from 1,000 men in 1861 to 165 after Antietam; built back up to 325 for Gettysburg; and went into winter quarters at Orange Court House in 1863 with 262 men. The Wilcox Brigade also took heavy losses in its officer's corps at Gettysburg.

Morale had become a problem in 1864. With Wilcox leaving to assume division command, the brigade had to get used to new commanders. There was a running feud between J.C.C. Sanders and Abner Perrin that started when Perrin accused Sanders about being involved with a request by the Alabama veterans to Gen. Lee to have their new commander, Perrin, removed from command; the number of desertions were increasing (especially in the 9th Alabama where the men were still upset about the cashiering of Col. Samuel Henry after Williamsburg), and furloughs home were getting to be very diffucult to obtain and were leading to desertions and men going AWOL. The old brigade lost some of its identity when it was moved into Mahone's Division, however the veterans still referred to themselves as Wilcox's Old Brigade (even though it was Perrin's or Sander's or Forney's Brigade) or as the Alabama Brigade. As casualties and desertions mounted in late 1864, however, regiments and brigades became distant memories and the surviving veterans referred mainly to their divisions in the fighting around Richmond and Petersburg.

John