Glover Chapter 12

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Utterly Used Up, Except the Bucktails" [1]

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The events which took place in the Shenandoah Valley in late May and early June 1862 were an obbligato to the action around Richmond. What happened in the Valley had a direct effect upon what happened on the Peninsula. The Bucktails, divided as they had been, played their little parts in both places.
Bayard's Brigade with Kane's four companies of First Rifles had already left Fredricksburg in the direction of Richmond when the news of Stonewall Jackson's doings in the Shenandoah came over the wires. The Administration was out to catch Jackson if possible. Kane's four companies were to have a hand in the chase. On May 28 General Bayard started his cavalry, Kane's Bucktails, and a little battery of mountain howitzers for the Shenandoah Valley. The Bucktail Battalion, 264 strong, which headed for Front Royal via Catlett's Station and Rectortown, was a small part indeed of the forces Lincoln and Stanton were endeavoring to bring against Lackson.[2]
It had all started at Front Royal on May 23 when Stonewall surprised a little Federal garrison there. The next day Jackson started to drive Union General Banks down the Shenandoah from Strasburg toward the Potomac. Washington ordered General Fremont, whose arm was in the mountains west of the Valley, to move to Harrisonburg Mc-

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Dowell, with Shields' Division (which had just come from the Valley) in advance, was directed to move toward Front Royal. The idea was to have all these forces in front of General T. J. Jackson when he should start back up the Shenandoah again after pursuing Banks.
Instead of moving to Harrisonburg, Fremont started north in the direction of Strasburg by the last day of May, Shields had reached Front Royal, where he learned that Jackson had slipped through Strasburg ahead of both him and Fremont, and was headed back up the Valley. Bayard's cavalry and the Bucktails were now up, and McDowell decided that the least that could be done would be to attack the Confederate wagon trains, which should be hurrying up the Valley turnpike behind the Rebel Army. On June 1 Bayard and the First Rifle Battalion drew this assignment. They proceeded cautiously toward Strasburg. As expected; the train was protected by cavalry. It was protected by artillery, too, and a strong force of infantry! The enemy lobbed a few shells in his direction, and Bayard wisely decided that a cavalry brigade and a handful of riflemen should have no business with such a force as was covering the hurrying wagons. However, he waited around until nightfall and then withdrew back across the Shenandoah River. The Bucktails spent the night guarding a railroad bridge across the river.[3]
Strasburg is at the northern end of a little range of rugged mountains by the name of Massanutten. This range divides the broad Shenandoah Valley as far south as Harrisonburg. Jackson was hastening up the Valley on the turnpike on the western side of the Massanuttens. McDowell sent Shields' Division along the eastern side of the mountains in the hope of intercepting Jackson at the other end of the range. Bayard and the Bucktails were to go through Strasburg and

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along the western side of the Massanuttens. This would be the course Fremont would follow.
          On the morning of June 2 when Bayard's New Jersey cavalry and the Bucktails approached Strasburg, they found that Old Jack's train had completely cleared the town. General Fremont had at last arrived. With Bayard's troopers in advance, the pursuit of Jackson was at last started. By 10 A.M. the Confederate rear guard was encountered. It was a series of little, delaying actions on the part of the Rebels all day long. General Turner Ashby, Jackson's favorite cavalry commander, was handling the rear of the swiftly moving Confederates, and doing a good job. The Bucktails were struggling to keep up with Bayard and his troopers. A rainy night ended the pursuit at Woodstock, only about ten miles south of Strasburg. The only fighting had been done by the cavalry with a little skirmishing by the First Rifle Battalion. Fremont just could not bring up his infantry. Jackson had been too fast for him.[4]
          The next day it was more of the same with the First Pennsylvania Cavalry of Bayard's Brigade in the lead. The swollen Shenandoah (North Fork) at Mount Jackson was reached just in time for the advance Union units to see the last of the flames which had consumed the bridge across the brimming stream. Jackson by burning this bridge could gain a few more hours while a pontoon bridge was being thrown across the unfordable river. It was the afternoon of June 6
before Bayard's Brigade, with the Bucktails trailing a bit behind, reached Harrisonburg.
          Bayard ordered the tired New Jersey horsemen beyond the town to look for enemy troopers. At first proceeding cautiously, the New Jersey troopers suddenly became bolder. Before they knew what had happened they ran into one of Ashby's regiments with two more close by. Fire came from

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the front and both flanks. Wearied Federal cavalrymen fell everywhere. Their colors were captured. The men practically panicked. The entreaties of their officers were in vain. Their colonel, Percy Wyndham, was wounded and captured and Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Karge', upon whom command devolved, said, "I was left alone among a headless mass of men and horses."[5]
When the battered New Jersey regiment got back with the news of what had happened to them, Colonel Kane decided that the wounded should be rescued and that his Bucktails were just the ones to do it. What conversation took place between General Bayard and the impetuous Kane about what the Bucktails should do is clouded in contradiction. However, the First Pennsylvania Cavalry and the Bucktails were advanced. Ashby, suspecting something just like this was preparing a reception committee in the form of two infantry regiments so placed as to effect an ambush in flank. Kane led his one hundred-odd First Rifles ahead of the cavalry and into some woods. Meeting the Fifty-Eighth Virginia Infantry, the Pennsylvania riflemen gave them such an accurate volley that the Virginians started to fall back. Kane realized, however, that he was greatly outnumbered. Wounded in the leg, Kane leaned against a tree, kept one eye on his left where he could see a flank attack forming, and told his men to "give them hell!" Ashby, his horse shot from under him, raised his sword and ordered the infantry to charge. Just then a Bucktail drew a bead. Ashby fell dead. Kane had now been shot again, in the chest this time, and as Colonel Bradley T. Johnson's First Maryland Regiment came tearing in on the flank, even Kane knew that his Bucktails had had enough.
Under Captain Charles F. Taylor, Company H, the First Rifles fell back from the hornet's nest they had stirred up. Taylor then went back for Kane, and they were both cap-

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tured.[6] Lieutenant Colonel Thomas L. Kane, of the Union Bucktails, unknowingly pronounced the first eulogy for the late Brigadier General Turner Ashby, C. S. A. Kane told his captors of his admiration for the valiant Confederate officer. He also told them how he had saved Ashby's life just that afternoon when he had stopped three of his men from picking the cavalryman off as he was sitting his horse a short distance from the Bucktails not realizing his danger Said Kane: "Ashby is too brave to die in that way."[7]
It appears to have been a useless little fight. Colonel Percy Wyndham, British and somewhat of an adventurer, in command of the New Jersey cavalry, had accomplished nothing. Certainly the lieutenant colonel of the Bucktails did nothing but display his own personal bravery and give his men a chance to demonstrate theirs, all to no end. Bayard had advanced his Pennsylvania cavalry when the First Rifles had become seriously involved but was driven back by Confederate artillery. Bayard was not the type of officer to withdraw before a few shells if going ahead would accomplish anything. Possibly Bayard revealed his opinion as much by what he left unsaid as by what he said next day in his terse report. Without mentioning Kane, except to say he was wounded and captured, the brigade commander wrote: "The Bucktails fought splendidly."[8]
The Bucktails had fought splendidly, and many of them had fallen. Of the 104 men that Kane led into the woods, seven were killed, thirty-nine wounded and five captured. including Kane, Captain Taylor and Captain William T. Blanchard, of Company I. Had Major General R. S. Ewell known the size of the Bucktail Battalion that opposed his regiments that day, one can be certain that he would not have seen fit to issue his General Orders No. 30. This order authorized Colonel Johnson's First Maryland Regiment,

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which had caught the First Rifles in flank and driven them, to append a captured bucktail to their color staff. Surprised indeed was Bradley T. Johnson, when he learned many years after the war from an ex-corporal of the Bucktail Company G, that there were only about one hundred Union riflemen trying to hold off the two Confederate regiments. Johnson estimated that there were about five hundred Rebel soldiers in the two outfits.[9]
          A few miles south of Harrisonburg at a little cross-roads known as Cross Keys, a division of Jackson's army under Ewell was waiting to see what Fremont would do. The rest were at Port Republic about four miles away, awaiting the approach of General Shields. At last the two Union forces were getting close together, although it was not until June 8 that Fremont and Shields each found out the location of the other.[10]
          Ewell had a strong position on a ride commanding the crossroads. Fremont did not know the country and was without good maps or guides. For fear that Ewell would get across the Shenandoah (South Fork), burn the bridge, and help Jackson knock out Shields, while Fremont was reconnoitering, Fremont decided to attack as quickly as he could. He would concentrate on the Confederate right. If he were successful there, he thought he could get on Ewell's line of retreat. The Bucktails were to be a part of the command of Brigadier General Julius Stahel, whose brigade was to form the Union left. Stahel ordered Captain Hugh McDonald, now in command of the First Rifles, to support a battery on the extreme left commanded by a Captain Buell.
          The Bucktails and the battery waited in a little woods as Stahel moved his infantry out along a road in open country toward the wooded ridge where the Confederates waited. Shortly after the Union brigade started up the woody ridge,

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McDonald began to hear the clatter of small arms fire. Soon the battery was ordered forward, and with it the Bucktails advanced amid considerable shelling from the Rebel guns posted on the ridge. Using a little ravine as cover, the battery and battalion were able to duck the shells and get the battery in position. Before the guns were unlimbered it was discovered that the position was too vulnerable to Union fire, so there was another scramble farther along the hollow to the left. Here Buell opened fire while the Bucktails watched the show from behind the protection of a bank. So far this Sunday afternoon battle was a lot better for the Bucktails than their experience of a couple of days before.
However, the situation rapidly changed. McDonald could hear the musketry fire rapidly coming closer. This could mean but one thing. Stahel was being forced back. Once again the battery would change position. This time it would be into a clump of woods. The Twenty-Seventh Pennsylvania Regiment, a part of Stahel's command which had gotten too far to the right to help much in the attack, suddenly appeared. The Bucktails and the Twenty-Seventh dashed into the woods followed by the battery. There they found a Mississippi regiment dead set on taking the guns. After one Confederate volley, it was bayonet against bayonet for a time. Then both lines seemed to recoil. Two pieces of the battery unlimbered and got in a little canister, but the fighting was too close for Buell to do much for fear of hitting Union soldiers. More gray-clad troops were now coming in to support the Mississippians. At the first lull in the fighting, the battery wihdrew followed by the Twenty-Seventh and the First Rifles. It was an orderly retirement and all the wounded were brought away. One Bucktail had been killed and there were seven wounded.[11]
That was the Battle of Cross Keys as the Bucktails saw it.

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They entered the fight hungry and with empty haversacks. Fremont made certain that they obtained rations, and, having eaten, the First Rifles felt better, even though they knew that it had not been a Union victory. Today Ewell had forced Fremont to give up his pursuit. Tomorrow Jackson would do the same to Shields at Port Republic. Stonewall would soon head for eastern Virginia. Orders were about to come from Washington for both Fremont and Shields to call it quits. The Valley Campaign was over.
While the experts still debate its exact net effect upon the Peninsula fighting, the Valley Campaign did much to enhance the military reputation of General Thomas Jonathan Jackson and his "foot cavalry." There were some Union outfits, too, which had done some pretty fast marching. The Bucktails, for example, had not performed too badly. They had kept up with Bayard's troopers all the way from Strasburg to Harrisonburg. They had encountered storms, floods, skirmishing, and a fight south of Harrisonburg---all on short rations. After Harrisonburg the cavalry had been worn out and left behind to rest up, but the Bucktails kept on going.
When two days after Cross Keys the Bucktails were ordered back to General McDowell and directed to march to Luray, some of them were no doubt convinced that they had proved a theory of Lieutenant Colonel Kane. It had become Kane's contention that a good infantry outfit could always wear out cavalry. The troopers might call them "coffee boilers," but the Bucktails had done a bit of marching and were entitled to all the coffee they could boil.[12]