17
"Mac" Gone, Sharps Going?
Bounty Men Coming?
162
"I
saw the Bucktails going out to drill. Their whole regiment numbered scarcely more than
two of our companies." So wrote a recent recruit from the camp
near Sharpsburg.[1] McClellan felt that the Army should be refitted
before moving on, so it remained in Maryland during the crisp autumn days. If "Little
Mac" was concerned over the condition of the Army
as a whole, Meade was Just as concerned about his Reserves. He had no more than three
thousand men fit for duty. Many of them were
barefoot, and the division lacked blankets, overcoats, ammunition, and forage. Meade was
also annoyed at the poor press the Reserve
Corps received for its work at Antietam. He was particularly irked by the papers referring to his division as "McCall's
troops." The Reserves' commander was, of
course, pleased by the praise his men received from the rest of the Army. He had come to
believe that there was no better fighting division in the entire Army of the Potomac.
Meade told McClellan that he did not
believe that his ranks could be filled by recruiting. He urged the commanding general to
send the Reserve Corps back to Harrisburg to be brought up to strength by the state. In
this he had the ardent support of Governor Curtin who always proudly con-
163
sidered the
Pennsylvania Reserves something very special. The governor wrote both Lincoln and
McClellan, but with no success. The Army needed the Reserves, diminished as they were.
They could not be spared even for a short time to add to their number. Finally, two new
Pennsylvania regiments, the One Hundred
Twenty-First and the One Hundred Forty-Second, were added to Meade's Division.[2]
The Bucktails suffered not only from
lack of men. They lacked officers. Deaths, wounds, capture, illness, and promotions had
taken a heavy toll. Captain McGee, upon whom command had devolved, was just not capable of
handling a regiment. Fortuitously Captain Charles Frederick Taylor, Company H, who had
been captured in the Shenandoah while trying to rescue Kane, had just
been exchanged. Technically new officers must be elected by, the men, but this system
which the law provided had not always produced the best officers, and the Reserves brass
did not like it. Governor Curtain, however, declined to issue new commissions without
elections. Taylor was highly regarded by officers and men alike. The impasse was finally
broken by a petition from the men requesting the governor to appoint Taylor to the
colonelcy. Although this had the approval of both Meade and Seymour, Curtin never issued
the commission until the law was changed. While Taylor had to wait a while for his eagles,
he got command of the regiment at once.[3]
The handsome, scholarly Taylor,
twenty-two years of age, was a brother of Bayard Taylor, the author. He was proficient in
French and German, polished and urbane, just about the last person, one would think, who
would be the choice of the Wildcats. [4] In the same manner as Taylor,
Captain Edward A. Irvin of K Company, was placed second in command.
Throughout a pleasant October the
Army rested and was
164
radually
re-equipped with all of the necessary articles of warfare. As a chilly, bleak November
neared, the Bucktails got their number up to a few more than three hundred, and listened
to all the camp rumors. Officers had gone from each regiment to Harrisburg to pick up
drafted men One story was that they would not get them. The old companies would be
consolidated, and the new men would form new regiments. While another rumor floated around
that Bucktail Lieutenant Lucius Truman expected to bring back over five hundred men from
Harrisburg, a not inconsiderable group of Wildcat veterans hoped that he would be
unsuccessful. They had fought the war thus far without bounty men in their ranks, and they
preferred to continue it that way. Rumor was rife that the Army was about to move, and the
saddest rumor of all was that "Little Mac" was on his way out.[5]
The
rumor that the Army was moving was true. Washington had been urging McClellan to seek
out the enemy ever since Lincoln had paid a visit to the troops in early October. Jeb
Stuart had been at it again, with a raid into Pennsylvania this time. The Government was
clamoring for action. McClellan finally started. The Reserve Corps crossed the Potomac
at Berlin (the present Brunswick) October 30. The Bucktails knew it had begun again.
Jackson was in the Shenandoah Valley.
Lee with Longstreet, was east of the Blue Ridge near Culpeper. McClellan moved the Army of
the Potomac to the vicinity of Warrenton. What he would have done from there on against
the astute Lee will never be known.
Another of the rumors had become a
fact. On a frosty November morning a mass of blue uniforms covered the Warrenton
countryside. The Army of the Potomac was drawn up in line by close column extending from
hill to hill as far as
165
one could
see. Why, the men did not know. A paper was handed to the adjutant of each regiment to be
read to the men---McClellan's farewell address to his soldiers, most of whom idolized him.
The Bucktail adjutant in a husky voice had hardly finished reading, when the dashing
McClellan rode up very near the front rank. With him was his successor, General Ambrose E.
Burnside, his whiskers neatly groomed. A large staff trotted along behind. That night, a
sad Bucktail tried to write home a description of the occasion. He. said that McClellan's
"appearance at the head of each regiment was the signal for the most deafening cheers
and wildest demonstrations of affection." Another waxed somewhat philosophical in his
remorse: "Could you have heard you would have wondered and asked yourself, as I did,
who is this man, who had scarcely been heard of two years ago, and who now had gained such
a hold upon so many thousands of hearts?"[6]
It was never quite the same after
"Little Mac" left. No Bucktail was articulate enough to express the difference.
Although no one said so, it may have been that with the going of their beloved leader,
there went also the last vestige of the romantic war they had so naively imagined that
spring when they eagerly left their Wildcat District homes to help "preserve the
Union."[7]
The Army of the Potomac had a new commander. So did the First Corps. The Army was
to be divided into three
grand
divisions, and Hooker was in line for promotion to the head of one of them. General John
F. Reynolds, who once
was the
Bucktails' brigade commander and later the chief the Pennsylvania Reserves, was glad to be
back from Harrisburg, after having been called there by Curtin to try to do something with
the Pennsylvania militia during the Antietam emergency. It had been a difficult
assignment, for the
166
new men, who
had been collected to defend the Keystone State when Lee started north, lacked much in
meeting Reynolds' definition of a soldier. To be back in charge of veteran troops was more
to the liking of the strict and demanding Reynolds. He was given the First Corps.[8]
Burnside did not highly regard the proposed plan of advancing south along the
Orange and Alexandria Railroad.
Perhaps he
remembered the difficulties encountered by Pope. By moving east and getting south of the
Rappahannock. In the vicinity of Fredericksburg, the newly-appointed commander could
shorten his line of supply. This was the route which Burnside proposed. After thinking it
over a bit, Lincoln told him to go ahead, but to move fast. The great machine of war was
made ready to start once again under its new commander, about whom nobody knew very much,
except that he had been a staunch supporter of McClellan. Each little unit was alerted for
its part in what was to take place lower on the Rappahannock.
As the Bucktails marched east, the
Piedmont clay began to give way to the sandy soil of the Virginia Tidewater. Nearing Aquia
Creek, the desolation wrought by war increased with each mile marched. Trees hacked down
for a multitude of military purposes, neglected fields, their fences carried away for
firewood, sad ruins of burned buildings, all were eloquent, if somewhat grotesque,
reminders that the war, as well as the marching men, had been there before. Some of the
Bucktails could sense that the conflict had taken on a new aspect. A few weeks previously,
President Lincoln n had issued a document known as the preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation. The War now was for something more than the preserving of the Union of
States. It had become a war to end slavery. Antietam had brought this about. Lincoln,
waiting until an auspicious time to announce the Proclamation, had
167
considered
Antietam a sufficient Union success to enable him to add this second Union objective. The
days of possible compromise, negotiated peace, or European intervention were fading away
as rapidly as those of that November. Truly it had become a fight to the finish.[9]
The coming winter would be the nadir
of the morale of the Army of the Potomac. With the Bucktails the glumness
and the
griping which would characterize that "winter of discontent" had already
commenced. The folks back home
in the
Wildcat District had to read between the lines of the scrawled letters they received that
fall to find out that their
boys were
thoroughly fed up with fighting. Something might be said about the high spirits of the
men, but now and then
the truth
would out. For example, one soldier wrote home the old story about the degrees of
importance in things mili-
tary. This
boy, who had carried (and used) a rifle over many miles of Virginia clay and sand and into
Maryland, told the
home-folks
that the Army regarded and cared for its components in this order: first were the
officers' horses, then the
officers
themselves, next the mules, and, lastly, the men. The men missed "Little Mac"
jingling up for an occasional brief
appearance.
Missed also was considerable equipment which somehow got left behind in the march from
Maryland. Ra
tions worse than usual. A Bucktail complained that even
beans and rice had not been issued on this march, and he had had enough of "crackers
fried in salt pork." Foraging in the desolate countryside was becoming increasingly
difficult, but seemed to be a more popular pastime than ever. Years later the regimental
historians could not resist temptation to do a bit of bragging about the stealing exploits
of the men that fall before Fredericksburg. 10[10]
Something else that bothered the
Bucktails was a rumor that they were to lose their breech-loading rifles. It proved to
168
be
groundless. but it was the cause of much concern. The men had come to set great store by
their Sharps. For the type of duty which the First Rifles were called on so often to
perform, the breech-loaders had proven a handy weapon. They could be reloaded in most any
position, a fact which any skirmisher could well appreciate. Then, too, a story had made
the rounds of the outfit that could not but buoy up the Bucktails when there was little
else to do so. A Confederate officer, taken at South Mountain was credited with the story
that Rebel soldiers, who had faced the Sharps-armed First Rifles at Second Bull Run,
swiftly skeddadled at the Maryland mountain. Ahead of them these gray-clad soldiers had
spied a bunch of Bucktails in the bushes.
Lying in their lonely camp near Aquia
Creek a few short miles from Fredericksburg that dreary December, the Bucktails awaited
orders that would again take them into battle. Their spirits might be low, but it was not
due to lack of moral support on the home front. The people of the northern Pennsylvania
hills had become very proud of their fighting Wildcat Regiment.[11]
Back home in the Wildcat District one of their many admirers had composed some lines which
could be sung to the tune of "Boys of Kilkenny." When these verses finally
reached the Wildcat ears, undoubtedly wry indeed were the grimaces that greeted some of
the lines. The good-intentioned civilian author not only did not know military
terminology. He did not understand war as the Bucktails had come to know it all too well.
There's a Corps in the Service
There's a corps in the service---the
Bucktails by name,
They're the Devils for fighting, we
belong to the same.
We care not for danger---we care not
for wealth---
So fill up your glasses, and drink to
our health.
We never were whipped---we never have
run,
We fight not for bounty---for our
country we come
To place the old flag on every mountain
top.
So here's our respects, will you take a
wee drop?
We're the boys that are called on, when
there's work to be done,
And before the "Rebels" know
it, we'll whip five to one.
Bullets don't scare us---we care not
for noise;
Come empty your glasses and drink to
the boys.
Here's a tear for our Colonel; he was
one of the best.
Here's a sigh for the Bucktails that
have gone to their rest;
Glorious was their death---they fell
fighting like men.
Let us drink now in silence, in memory
of them.[12]
