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Ballots for Bullets

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          A quarter century later some of the Reserves officers, in their flowery speeches made at the dedication of regimental monuments at Gettysburg, referred to July 4, 1863 as the "glorious fourth." This was merely oratory. Weather-wise, at least, it was not glorious. By noon a drizzle had started, soon changing to a downpour. By nightfall the defeated army of Robert E. Lee was in retreat. The victorious army of George G. Meade was so badly beaten-up that its com­mander believed it should try to do no more than make sure the retreat continued. Diminished ranks of boys in butter­nut trudged back toward Maryland along the Fairfield road. The wagons and ambulances were sent bumping along over  the Chambersburg road. Meade started his forces moving by a parallel route east of the roads used by Lee.

The Bucktails with Crawford's Division left Gettysburg  on the 5th. Slow marches over muddy roads brought the Fifth Corps near Boonsboro by the 9th. The next night the  soldiers camped at a place called Delaware Mills. They were in familiar territory. Delaware Mills was on Antietam  Creek.[1]  Federal cavalry had destroyed the Confederate pon­toons. The rains had rendered the Potomac unfordable. The Southern Army was concentrated around Williamsport with its back to the river. Crawford expected another fight. He was trying to have the Second Brigade of the Reserves, still

 

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at Alexandria, sent to him. It rained again on July 13, and that evening the Reserves were alerted for an early morning march toward the stranded enemy. The Bucktails were on the brigade right as flankers when Crawford next morning started the division toward Williamsport. The Reserves' chief did not get his expected battle. The Southern Army during the night had crossed back into Virginia. At Wil­liamsport the Rebels had forded the Potomac. A short dis­tance downstream at Falling Waters they had used a bridge. The Reserves were pushed on to Falling Waters. By the time they got there, Northern cavalry had finished a brush with the enemy rear guard. It was all over. That night the Buck­tails bivouacked in a clover field along the Potomac.[2]  For a day or so it had looked like Crawford was right and that Meade would attack in time. The decision of a Union coun­cil of war, however, had given Lee just enough time to make good his escape.

Just as after Antietam, the Reserves, on a rainy July 17, crossed back into Virginia at Brunswick. For the next couple of weeks it would be easy marches on short rations for Craw­ford's men as the two armies moved south. Empty stomachs produced more than the usual amount of grousing. After three days with scarcely any food, the Bucktails feasted on the 27th upon pork and hardtack with a few non-govern­ment issue berries.[3] By early August Lee had reached the vicinity of Culpeper, and the Army of the Potomac was back in familiar territory along the Rappahannock.

There during the sultry summer days the two armies kept an eye on each other while they rested and refitted. Gettys­burg had made the country more aware than ever of how ter­rible war can be. Back in the Wildcat District the Bucktail lieutenant colonel, Alanson Niles, and Lieutenant William Taylor, of Company E, were limping about their hometowns with their Plum Run wounds .[4] Similar scenes were being enacted in a hundred hamlets. A casualty-conscious nation reading about draft riots and the execution of bounty jumpers. The system of paying men to join the army had, by the summer of 1863, given rise to a rather lucrative practice for those culprits low enough to indulge in it. The method was simple enough. One would join up in one town, collect bounty, and as soon as possible desert. Under another name he would again enlist to help fill the quota of another city, collect another bounty, and repeat the process as long as his luck held out. Drastic measures to curb this evil had been decided upon.

On a hot August day the entire Fifth Corps was drawn up a hillside from which every last man had a clear view of a plain below. There, there were five open graves freshly dug out of the Virginia clay. One of the brigade bands played a mournful dirge as five wagons, each bearing a coffin, drew into sight. On each rough box was seated a bounty jumper whose luck had left him when he had deserted from the Fifth Corps. The wagons halted near the open graves. The five men were blindfolded and placed in line. After a short prayer, the rifles cracked. Before the last of the corps had reached camp the five graves were filled and covered. The Bucktails did not consider that they had needed this object lesson. Possibly to show their resentment, that night more than one succeeded in finding some cheap whiskey and getting gloriously drunk.[5]

 Almost as if to compensate for the unpleasant duty of wit­nessing the execution of bounty jumpers, the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps had an enjoyable day August 28. On that pleasant sunny afternoon the officers and men of the Reserves gave their old skipper, Major General George G. Meade, a fine sword, together with sash and the other trap-

 

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pings customarily presented on such occasions. The men had decorated the camp with evergreens and it presented a rather festive appearance as Governor Curtin and other dignitaries began to assemble for the five o'clock ceremony. Under a green arbor General Crawford made the presentation to the commanding general, who was flanked by his staff and sur­rounded by a group of VIP's from Pennsylvania.

Meade made quite a little speech in accepting the gift from his former command. He briefly reviewed their battles, and the tribute he paid the Pennsylvania Reserves was sin­cere. He took especial pains to state that as a whole they had behaved well that day at Frayser's Farm (the old McCall­-Hooker controversy just would not be forgotten). Almost as an afterthought, it seemed, the commanding general men­tioned the Reserves' work at Gettysburg. Meade's old friend, Reynolds, came in for the highest praise. In specifically re­ferring to a few other officers who had fought their last bat­tles, Meade mentioned the two Bucktail colonels, McNeil and Taylor.

After the cheers for Meade had finally died away, another man popular with the Pennsylvania Reserves was intro­duced. Governor Andy Curtin arose and gave forth with a rousing speech before the division which, of all the divisions in the Army of the Potomac, he considered the best. The speechmaking over, soldiers and civilians alike turned to food. The brass and visiting dignitaries dined in an im­provised banquet hall "where was spread all the delicacies that a refined taste and epicurian palate could suggest. "[6]

The chairman of the committee which had so successfully planned and staged this bit of pleasantry in the midst of war was the chief of the First Brigade, Colonel William McCand­less. McCandless, a machinist turned lawyer, had started his military career as a private in April 1861. When the Second

 

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Reserves was organized he emerged from the election a major. As lieutenant colonel he led the Second on the Pen­insula, where his conduct brought him his eagles. Wounded at Second Bull Run, McCandless recovered in time for the fighting at Fredericksburg. In the spring of '63 he had been been the First Brigade of the Reserves. He was fast becom­ing a good combat officer, one of what was now becoming quite a long line of Philadelphia lawyers to lead Wildcat lumbermen in battle.[7]

That day when Governor Curtin delivered his oration to the Pennsylvania Reserves he very probably was thinking politics, if he did not directly allude to the subject. Less than ten days before, a Republican state convention in Pittsburgh had practically drafted him into nomination for a second term. Earlier in the year Curtin had been somewhat reluctant to try to succeed himself. His health had not been good, and the old political feud between the moderate Curtin and the radical Senator Simon Cameron worried the governor about the success of the party in the fall election. As always, the politicians were looking a year ahead to the presidential election of 1864. Republican defeat in Pennsylvania in 1863 could do much toward a nationwide Democratic victory the next year. Had a War Democrat been nominated, Andy Cur­tin considered the successful prosecution of the war of such great importance that he would have been willing to support a Democratic candidate. Above all, the Pennsylvania governor wanted Lincoln re-elected and the war pushed to a successful conclusion.

The Pennsylvania Democrats did not nominate a War Democrat. Their failure to do so brought Curtin into the race. The Democrats' choice of a nominee plus the gover­nor's popularity with the Pennsylvania soldiery in turn

 

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brought the boys in blue from the Keystone State into the fall political campaign.[8]

The Democratic nominee was George W. Woodward, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice. He was very much a states' rights man. What was more important there were those who called him a secessionist and Copperhead. Justice Woodward, from his high court bench, would soon hand down some decisions which his enemies would construe as proof that he was not wholeheartedly behind the war effort. Already he had rendered an opinion which aroused the ire of many a Pennsylvania soldier. After it had been upheld by a lower court, upon appeal, the Democratic nominee had invalidated an old Pennsylvania law which had permitted soldiers in the field to vote. Woodward's multi-page opinion was technically sound, and only one justice dissented. This made no difference to the Pennsylvania soldiers, who very naturally were not concerned with the legal niceties. Then too, Curtin's supporters had played it smart. The conven­tion which re-nominated the governor had also adopted a platform containing a plank advocating a state constitu­tional amendment granting soldiers in the field the right to vote.[9]

While the business of the soldiers voting in the field had stirred up the men against Woodward, the Pennsylvania troops, most certainly the Reserves, would have been for Curtin anyway. Andy Curtin had become known as "the soldiers' friend," and deservedly so. From the beginning of the war he had spared no pains to support the Pennsylvania soldiers. He answered their letters. He paid many visits to the camps. He was frequently arguing with Washington on their behalf. His particular fondness for the Reserves was appreciated and reciprocated by the men.

Temporarily disenfranchised themselves, they turned to

 

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the homefront on behalf of "the soldier's friend."[10]  The Wildcats were among Curtin's strongest supporters. Every man had a father, an older brother, or a few friends back home who would be glad to give Andy a vote if it would help a war along and please the voteless soldiers. It seemed that every Wildcat who knew how scribbled a letter home on be­half of the man who had created the Pennsylvania Reserves. They had various ways of putting their arguments, but one Potter County boy summed up what they were all trying to say, bluntly but accurately: "Give us Curtin and to hell with Woodward." The Bucktails had their own election, albeit it was only a straw vote, and sent the results back to the Wild­cat District for publication a couple of weeks before the real voting. The returns of the Bucktail election carried by the local gazettes showed 308 votes for Curtin and 4 for Woodward.[11]

At the last moment an attempt was made to inject some McClellan influence into the campaign on behalf of Wood­ward. The soldiers had seen too much war. "Little Mac" had once meant much to them, but now they realized that some­thing more was needed to win the conflict than the dash and Jingle of a popular general. Lieutenant Colonel Niles prob­ably correctly stated the feelings of his men concerning the "McClellan angle in a letter to his hometown paper. He ad­mitted that McClellan had once been a great idol of the Army. He hastened to add that the  men of the First Rifles, as

well as the officers, now agreed that "Little Mac" should have been removed. In so far as anything with regard to McClel­lan and the Pennsylvania governor contest was concerned, the men wanted no part of it, Niles said. Then the Bucktail officer added, with regard to McClellan: "to say nothing about fears of a graver kind which exist in the minds of very many officers and men."[12]

 

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The election, held October 13, turned out to be a sound victory for Curtin. The Wildcat District voted solidly for "the soldiers' friend." A few of the Bucktails made it home to vote. One little hamlet was almost as strong for Curtin as the First Rifles. There the governor captured seventy-nine out of the eighty-one votes cast.[13]

The Pennsylvania soldiers and their folks back home who supported Curtin in the election of 1863 did so because they felt that it would help to hasten a Union victory. Little did they realize that they were also helping to put an end to cer­tain concepts of government. The nation, born of revolu­tion, was now growing up. Before its adolescence could be completed, another armed conflict had been necessary. The war was putting an end to the doctrine of states' rights as it had been held by many in the past. The soldiers on the battle fields were bringing this about, most of them without know­ing it. Without knowing it, the Pennsylvania voters, by electing the Republican Curtin over the Democrat Wood­ward, had helped to seal the doom of the old states' rights idea.

The governmental concepts which had become part and parcel of the judicial thinking of justice George W. Wood­ward and subscribed to by many good Americans were be­ing rapidly replaced. That was one of the reasons he had been defeated. Within the next few weeks Woodward would have an opportunity to assert his outmoded legal philosophy. Almost in defiance of the changes in governmental doctrine wrought by war, justice Woodward, in his cloistered cham­bers, penned a long opinion. It was in support of his de­cision invalidating the draft law as it applied to members of the state militia.[14]

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