A Winter of Mud

In a year which had seen the Union defeat at First Bull Run and the debacle at Ball's Bluff, a Union victory, even a small victory, was most welcome news to the North. Today the Dranesville engagement is unknown except to those familiar with the Civil War. It was not so at year's end 1861, when it was the sole, although tiny, oasis of victory in an area that had been a desert of defeat.

Cameron, soon to be replaced as the War Department head, was warm in his praise of the conduct of the troops

from his own state. McClellan exaggerated some when he used a favorite adjective of his in referring to Dranesville.

The adjective was "brilliant." Governor Curtin lost no time in visiting Pierpont to convey personally his congratulations

to the division that had started out as his brain child. And the following month the Bucktails and the other regiments

engage stood in ankle dee mud for a flag presentation. Pennsylvania's Galusha A. Grow, Speaker of the House,

handed back to each regiment its colors. On a white stripe in gold letters on each flag now appeared "Dranesville, Decem

ber 20, 1861.[1]

After Dranesville the Bucktails settled down in what would be their winter quarters. Their section of Camp Pierpont they dubbed "Bucktail City." It was a collection of little log huts. Usually about five men would join together to

construct these crude shelters. The sides were built of logs of four to ten inches in diameter. Their tents formed the top. In a corner was a stone fireplace with a chimney of sod. Varying in size, most huts were about eight feet square. Usually not more than four or five feet in height, the big lumbermen were continually stooping when treading about inside. The men from the Wildcat District did not mind much the Virginia winter weather, which, compared to that of their native area, was mild. Fire wood, however, was a problem. The government furnished very little. The Rebels had already burned all the fence rails. As a result the soldier had to supplement the GI fuel with green wood carried for a mile or more.

Most of the Bucktails hailed from northern Pennsylvania where winter meant snow. Snow, they could take. Snow, lots of snow, they were used to. Winter in an army camp in Virginia was different. One fellow pretty well summed it up: "Snow has not been over two inches deep but the mud is about as deep as the snow in Potter County." The home folks who received his letter knew what he meant. They knew the depth of Potter County snow .[2]

Drill, because of the mud, was suspended, and camp life again became humdrum. There was one thing that broke the monotony of mud. The Bucktails were about to elect a colonel .

Thomas Leiper Kane had been the inspirer and the organizer of the regiment. Its unique symbol and name had their origin with him. Kane had been in the lead at Dranesville. He had gotten out of a sick bed to be with his men at that time. He was now recovering from the wound he had received. However, Kane's election as colonel was not at all certain. After Biddle had left and Lieutenant Colonel Kane took over the regiment, Kane's lack of-proficiency in drill

was by comparison quite pronounced. By this time the men were taking pride in the way the regiment could behave on the drill field. They did not like it when their CO made mistakes.

There was something else a bit more basic. Perhaps somewhat intuitively, the men sensed that Kane had a flare for occasional rashness, which even a Wildcat could not consider a good quality for a commanding officer. There was concrete evidence of this tendency, too. For example, there was the previous summer when the lieutenant colonel had pushed his scouting party way beyond support contrary to Colonel Biddle's orders. The Bucktails never doubted the bravery of Thomas Kane. They did question his discretion.

Many of the men realized that Biddle had made them into a regiment. Some probably thought he had done this in spite of themselves. Biddle was gone. He was missed by the Bucktails. When it came time to elect a new commander, Biddle's most ardent admirers looked about for a man who would most closely match their hero. They finally came up with Hugh W. McNeil, the sad-eyed captain of Company D. Six feet tall, with black hair, eyes, and beard, McNeil's quiet and efficient manner had impressed the men who knew him. He had studied at Yale, had been a lawyer, and at the outbreak of the war was cashier of a bank in Warren. He had gone to the Wildcat District when threatened with pulmonary trouble a few years before. McNeil was thirty-two years old when he agreed to become candidate for colonel of the Bucktails. He had, in fact, commanded the regiment for a short time at Dranesville while Kane had charge of the brigade.

Election day was January 22 The polls opened at 9 A.M. The voting was to be done by companies in alphabetical

order. As soon as the voting began, so did the betting. Kane started out a two-to-one favorite. By noon the odds were

even. The polls did not close until five o'clock but by 3 , the odds were on McNeil two-to-one. Over eight hundred members of the regiment exercised their right to choose their commanding officer. They chose McNeil by a margin of 223 votes. As would be expected, the three companies which Kane had brought down the Susquehanna from McKean, Elk, and Cameron Counties voted heavily for their leader. They were joined by Company H, Chester County. McNeil carried the other six counties. Companies A and E, both from the Wildcat District, were very evenly divided. The results of the voting in the various companies showed that in no sense was the contest one of geographical origin. Both candidates came from northern Pennsylvania and it was Wildcat vs. Wildcat.

Lieutenant Colonel Kane was philosophical in defeat. It had been a rather bitter contest, and Kane told his supporters "to refrain from all demonstrations of discontent." He charged them in particular "not to bury their bucktails nor remove them from their caps."[3]

The election was over at "Bucktail City," but the mud was not. A hometown editor paid a visit to the camp. He rode out from Washington in a long covered contraption with hard seats called a diligence. The eight-mile trip cost him $1.00, and when he reached the camp he could not find the crossings of the company streets because they were buried in the mud. Hoping for snow or a freeze or almost anything for a change, a young fellow wrote: "Mud, mud, mud, indoors

and outdoors, the view is a wilderness of mud." With drill still suspended, the Bucktails turned to euchre and a little

poker around pay day. An occasional boxing was arranged now and then. Once in a while some bit of impromptu entertainment occurred to break the monotony. One day it snowed an inch or so and Companies A and. G had

a snowball battle. At dark a truce was arranged whereby hostilities were to be resumed the following morning. During the night rain washed away all the ammunition. And, there was more mud.

A favorite pastime during the muddy months, when the rabbits would accommodate, was something like this When

a Bucktail spied a rabbit he would as quietly as possible alert as many of his comrades as he could. The point of the game

was to surround the rabbit with. Wildcats. If enough Wildcats could be collected, once in a while one could catch the

rabbit. The rules of the game called for bare hands only and the immediate release of the rabbit in the hope that he might

sometime return for another game. Once only was a fox substituted. The regiment was standing inspection on a Sunday

morning. A fox ran across the parade ground. Somebody started for him. The first soldier was immediately joined by

a dozen others. In a matter of seconds discipline was gone. It remained that way until a few minutes later when several

hundred soldiers had caught one very scared fox.

Mired in inactivity themselves, the news of the Union capture of Forts Henry and Donelson was cheering to the camp. This and the reported success of Burnside at Roanoke Island were most welcome to the men. At the same time these reports of Union success on other fronts had a tendency to increase the general restlessness. Cooped up day after day in their little huts and bogged down in a foot or so of mud every time they tried to move about, men and officers alike became more and more impatient for a change. Looking back now to Camp Curtin the previous June, the Bucktails realized that they had been woefully ill-prepared for combat when they blithely started for Cumberland. Now, so they believed, it was different. They had marched under the broiling sun and slept in the rain; they could go through the

intricate routines which transformed a marching column to a battle line; they had been at Dranesville. They had

eir flag to prove it. Were they not veterans? They thought they were.[4]

March came, and with it signs of activity.

Mud had not been the only reason for the inactivity of the Army of the Potomac during the first winter of the war. McClellan wanted time to reorganize, to train, to prepare. The country looked to the Army building up in front of Wash-

ington to drive Johnston's army out of northern Virginia and open up the Potomac below the capital. The impression was that when he got ready McClellan would move by Manassas. By January it became apparent that "Little Mac" had given up the Manassas movement. The general wanted a big amphibious operation down the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay. Then it would be either up the Rappahannock to Urbanna or up the York River toward Richmond. Joe Johnston made the decision as to the river by withdrawing the Confederate Army to the vicinity of Gordonsville behind the Rappahannock and Rapidan. This move on the part of Johnston eliminated the Urbanna route from consideration.

With the Confederate withdrawal, their batteries on the right bank of the Potomac pulled out, and the Union Army advanced to Centreville, Manassas, and Leesburg. Lincoln gave rather reluctant approval to McClellan's plan to ship the Army to the James-York Peninsula and then move upon Richmond from the east. Upon the President's insistence, a sufficient covering force for the Union capital was agreed upon. Lincoln also insisted that enough troops remain at Manassas to protect that strategic railroad area. The Administration and the War Department set to work with a will to provide the shipping required for the Peninsula expedition. A vast machine of war began to move south. The Bucktail

Regiment, with McCall's Division, preparing to leave Camp Pierpont, was but a little cog in this big military machine.[5] After the usual several days of rumors, the division moved out of Pierpont about noon on a cloudy Monday, March l0.

Once again it was west along the Dranesville road. The men marched with three days' cooked rations and without tents.

That night camp was made near a worn out-grist mill at a place called Hunter's Mills about eighteen miles from Pier-

pont. Then there was a halt of several days during which the Bucktails engaged in a little foraging for their own mess.

The morning of the 15th the long roll beat set the division off on a counter-march to within three miles of Pierpont.

Then the column turned right toward Falls Church. Marching all the afternoon in a steady drizzle, clothes became wet

and heavy. A recent order required each man to carry one hundred rounds of cartridges. In spite of the extra weight of

water and ammunition and the red Virginia mud, the division that day covered the twenty-five miles to Falls Church.

Here the Bucktails fared better than the other regiments. The First Rifles went about a mile beyond the town and found an abandoned camp with tents pitched and even a few stoves in place. There were also blankets. Straggling was not a Bucktail characteristic but there was straggling that day.

The next day Alexandria was reached. The town was full of soldiers and the wharves crowded with vessels leaving

every day for Fort Monroe at the tip of the Virginia Peninsula. The men expected that they, too, would embark in a day or so. They wanted to leave and they wanted their pay. There had been no pay since January. At Hunter's Mills the Bucktails had been issued new oil-cloth raincoats. Each man carried one in his knapsack, and a combination of three raincoats was supposed-to make a-serviceable tent cover for three men. As it rained nearly every day at Alexandria, the men

had a good opportunity to try out the new-fangled tents which were all they had. They were far from pleased with

their new "dog houses." The griping at Alexandria not only included no pay and poor tents, but was more pronounced than usual over the food. There was no pepper and no butter. Usually the pork was strong. Hominy made a poor substitute for corn meal, and beans were not relished for desert.[6]

The days extended into weeks. Each day saw fewer other outfits around Alexandria. Finally, McCall's Division only was left. Then the word got around that the division would not sail for the Peninsula after all. It would go overland by Manassas. The Army of the Potomac had recently been divided into corps. McCall's Division was assigned to the First Corps, commanded by McDowell., The men were puzzled and disappointed at not going to the Peninsula by ship.

What they did not know was that there had been some kind of a mix-up over the number of troops left to cover Wash-

ington. McClellan's arithmetic did not agree with that of the President. To make certain that the covering force would be

adequate, McDowell's Corps was being detained. The plan called for it to move to Fredericksburg, and. ultimately join McClellan if the Confederates made no threat against Washington.

On Aril 8 McDowell ordered General McCall's Division to move the next day to Manassas by rail.[7]