Glover Chapter 11

Tired, Hot, and Lousy

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"My God! Where are my Bucktails?" Colonel McNeil just out of the hospital, had hurried to Harrison's Landing to join his men. Now, as the remnant of what had once been six proud companies filed past, the colonel turned paler than his illness had left him. He gazed at the little, wearied, haggard column and cried unashamedly.
After Frayser's Farm it had been another night march to Malvern Hill. Then a day's wait while the Union artillery mowed down wave after wave of Confederate infantry. Then it was on to Harrison's Landing by another night march.[1] The Seven Days were over. The Pennsylvania Reserves, a completely battered division, would at last get some rest. Their losses had been proportionately far in excess of those of the Army as a whole.[2]
The worn-out soldiers, had they known it, probably would have little cared that their division commander and "Fighting Joe" Hooker would soon engage in another fight orally and on paper, as to how badly, if at all, the Reserves had broken and run at Frayser's Farm. Old Soldier McCall came out second best in the argument. Proud man that he was, he could not admit that there was any panic worth the mention. Hooker's original accusation that the whole division was completely routed was an exaggeration, but he was always closer to the actual facts than McCall. The Reserves'

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commander chose to ignore the reports of his own regimental officers and those in command of nearby units. Determined to maintain his point, the tired, old general spent considerable time in marshalling what he considered was satisfactory evidence that his men had done what, under the circumstances, was probably well-nigh impossible.
Joe Hooker in the next few months would make his full share of mistakes. However, upon reflection, and after seeing the Reserves behave at South Mountain and Antietam, he summed up the situation reasonably and accurately. Hooker concluded: "I do not think that it was so m-uch the fault of the men as of other causes. . . Troops can be whipped, I take it, and still preserve their honor." Blinded by possibly pardonable pride, George McCall could not bring himself to realize that his soldiers were only men. Good men, of course, but they were only human. When the entered the battle of June 30 they had already fought two battles within the past few days. During this time they had had practically no sleep. They had helped cover the retreat across the swamps from Mechanicsville to Riddell's Shop when there were plenty of other troops available who had not done so much fighting. And then it happened that at Frayser's Farm they had the spot that Lee chose first to hit the hardest. Joe Hooker well knew what a confused mess the command situation was on June 30. He knew that that situation could not be of any help to the men in the ranks.
The Rebels themselves had panicked somewhat at Gaines' Mill just a few days before. If McCall knew that, he considered it no excuse for his men doing so. Old Soldier McCall believed that no good soldier would run reardless of the circumstances. His men were good soldiers. Therefore they did not run. McCall forgot that there is an end to human endurance. Had he not done so, there was no one in a better

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position to realize that, to paraphrase Hooker, his men were badly beaten, but preserved their honor.[3]
          While McClellan entertained President Lincoln at Harrison's Landing and tried to give him political advice, the battered Bucktails and the other battle-tired soldiers took things as easy as they could. Shortly the First Rifles were speculating as to how soon the captured members of Companies E, F, and K would be exchanged and how many of the wounded could be returned to duty.
          It had been over a year since any of the lumbermen had swung an axe, except to cut a little firewood. The Wildcats were to have an opportunity to do some axe-wielding for army pay. General Seymour, in temporary command of the division, wanted a bridge built over a little tributary of the James and he wanted it done quickly. At the point to be bridged the water was ten feet deep in places and the distance to be spanned was several hundred feet. The engineers estimated the work would take several days to complete when they got the material. Stone told Seymour that his lumbermen could do the job in less time and with the material at hand. All night long the Virginia tidewater rang with the sound of blades biting into trees as only northern Pennsylvania woodsmen could make them bite. Splashing about in the stream until daylight, the Bucktails had Seymour's bridge ready for him early the next morning.[4]
          The First Rifles were badly in need of replacements. Even when those captured during the Seven Days returned the regiment would be severely undermanned. The original idea was to have Major Stone and Captain Wister return to Pennsylvania to recruit for the regiment. Colonel McNeil, however, had in mind a grander scheme. He wanted to see a whole new Bucktail brigade. McNeil wrote to Governor Curtin making this suggestion. To other political friends he

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made the same overture, speaking in glowing terms of Stone and the Bucktails during the Peninsula fighting. The idea appealed to the Pennsylvania governor. Stone and Wister started back home to recruit new regiments. They recruited two. These became the One Hundred Forty-Ninth Pennsylvania Volunteers and the One Hundred Fiftieth. Wister got the command of the one regiment and Stone of the other. So, instead of gaining recruits, the Bucktails lost two good officers.
There was another school of thought among the original outfit concerning the new Bucktail regiments. Between the two schools the cleavage was wide indeed. As might be expected, Kane was opposed to any other regiment sharing the name or the symbol. He had as many, if not more supporters, as the McNeil school. It could not be gainsaid that the symbol was unique and was peculiarly appropriate for a regiment hailing from the area whence most of the First Rifles came. The Bucktails had started something of a reputation. It was only to be expected that there were those who resented any new outfits adopting what many of the First Rifles considered exclusively theirs. The name, so they argued, not only belonged to them by right of first appropriation, but by dint of hard fighting. On the other hand, no one could say that any member of the regiment had done more to make "Bucktail" a respected name and symbol than Major Roy Stone. The war would end in 1865, but the argument would not.
Whatever the right or wrong of the controversy, the name "Bucktail" proved to be an effective recruiting device. In many parts of the Commonwealth from Meadeville to Media, "Bucktail Brigade" were the words that headed the recruiting placards. Mention of the various bounties which the volunteers might receive was given a much more modest

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position on the posters. At a recruiting station in Philadelphia "hung a seductive array of bucktails to be bestowed upon the expected recruits. "[5]
During the first week or so at Harrison's Landing the men had been too worn out to realize to what a poor camp site they had retreated. The muddy flats along the James became to the Bucktails a summertime version of Camp Pierpont. Along with mud they had flies, mosquitoes, poor drinking water, and a stench so bad that everyone thought it must be the product of a thousand latrines dug side by side. One Bucktail wrote that after the Seven Days he knew he was filthy, and he did not much care. After he had been at the Landing a few days he discovered he was lousy. This he did mind. The homefolks understood the word "lousy" well
enough. Not at once, however, did they understand that when their boy wrote that many of his buddies were afflicted with "Virginia Quickstep" he was referring to diarrhea. The men finally began to get some fresh vegetables, tomatoes cabbages, to supplement the boiled beef diet.[6]
A private in Company E, only just arrived at the camp, sat down in his hot, smelly tent to alleviate the fears of his parents at home. He started his letter with the reminder that he had been promising to get to Richmond. "Well, I've been there and at Belle Island too, a prisoner," he confessed. Certainly there was nothing wrong with soldiers who could maintain a sense of humor like that. Early August brought more Bucktails to Harrison's Landing, exchanged from Confederate prisons. Most of them reported that they had first been confined in a tobacco storehouse in Richmond and later taken to Belle Island. Their chief complaint was that the Rebels furnished them poor rations. At Belle Island some of the Bucktails had joined an abortive plot to escape. For its failure the men blamed a Union soldier who had been

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born in the South. They always thought he had tipped off to the Confederates their little plan.[7]
          The Bucktails had had an opportunity to examine the Sharps rifles of the Berdan men with whom they had fought two battles and to observe the rapidity with which these breech-loaders could be fired. When it came time to turn in their Enfields and Springfields, the Bucktails wanted Sharps After standing for four hours in the hot August sun to exchange arms, they were told that they were not to receive Sharps. The old Camp Curtin routine over inferior weapons was repeated. This time their colonel was with the men in their stand. McNeil marched his companies back to camp with no new arms. The next day they received Sharps rifles.[8]
          While McClellan was doing nothing in particular with his Army of the Potomac back of Malvern Hill with the Union gun boats hard by in the James, things in northern Virginia were taking on a different aspect. The commands of Fremont, McDowell, and Banks had been combined. For a while there would be a new Union army, the Army of Virginia. Out of the West had come General John Pope, who also liked gun boats. Pope had gained some success with the help of gun boats at Island No. 10 on the Mississippi. Lincoln hoped that he would be a winner when brought East. He was placed in command of the new army. The wily Lee reasoned that the best way to stop McClellan from hangin around Richmond's back door was to go after Pope. Jackson was sent toward the Rapidan to keep Pope entertained. On August 9 Jackson and Pope fought the Battle of Cedar Mountain. The Administration had already decided to pull McClellan off the Peninsula.
           So on August 14 Colonel McNeil marched his little band of Bucktails down to the James where they were loaded on the steamer Kingston. Dropping down the river, they lay off

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Old Point Comfort for three days waiting for coal. The men wanted to go ashore, but permission was refused. They were resentful. The soldiers were glad to have left the hot, stinking, lousy camp, and they did not mind so much the prospect of more fighting in another part of Virginia. But they wanted to take advantage of any opportunity for a little fun on the way.
Finally the Kingston steamed out of Hampton Roads past Fort Monroe and up Chesapeake Bay. Looking out across the water of the wide bay a homesick Bucktail could dream of those high mountains of his native Pennsylvania whence so much of that water came. He had been in the Army over a year, During that time he had drilled in the hot sun, slept in the cold rain, marched in sticky mud, and stood guard on starless nights. But it was not until after seven terrible days on a swampy, sandy neck of land in Virginia that he really knew about war .[9]