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Miller, William J. "No One Doubted Colonel Taylor's Capabilities--or His Courage under Fire." America's Civil War 2 (July 1989)
Funerals were common in Pennsylvania
the second week of July 1863, but the mourners who stood in a warm rain by an open grave
in the village of Kennett Square took no solace from the knowledge that their sorrow was
commonplace. The old men and women who clustered by the puddles on matted grass beneath a
cypress tree could only lament their loss as the remains of their neighbor, a young
soldier who had risen so far so fast that he had seemed destined for greatness, was
lowered into a wet grave.
Charles Frederick Taylor had been entirely
average---just a young farmer among the tens of thousands of young farmers who had gone
off to war in 1861. But once in uniform, he had proved himself to be that rarest of
breeds-a superb volunteer officer, the type of regimental officer every superior dreams
about. He took responsibility for himself and his men. He was vigorous, swift and
precise in executing orders. He was personally brave, always being among or ahead of
his men in battle. Most of all, however, he had an intense desire to perform his duty
well; he craved the high opinion of both his men and his superiors,
"I am not unduly ambitious of
promotion," he once wrote to his sister, "but I am ambitious of a high
reputation as an officer in the Army, and, in order to deserve that my utmost energies
and whatever ability I may have will be required.”
Born Feb. 6, 1840, Taylor grew up in Kennett
Square, just west of Philadelphia. The wooded hills, neat meadows and clear brooks made
the area a fine place for a boy to grow up, but there was more to the area than the
picturesque. Just a morning's walk from the Taylor farm lay the battlefield on the banks
of the Brandywine River where Washington had been defeated by Cornwallis in 1777.
Young Fred grew up with tales of the valor of
Nathanael Greene and Light Horse Harry Lee ringing in his ears and could even see the tree
under which, as local legend had it, the wounded Lafayette, weak from loss of blood, had
been lain to have his wounds dressed.
By age 18, Taylor had had two years at the
University of Michigan and a year traveling in Europe, where he had become fluent in
French and nearly so in German. Want of money forced him from the university, however, so
he returned to the family farm, Hazeldell. His father was an invalid, and the farm had
suffered, so Fred immediately set about trying to get the place back into profitability.
"I believe that it will only depend on
myself whether this farm carried on properly will be self-sustaining," he wrote to
his brother in January 1861, "and I am desirous of testing my own capabilities .... I
have a heart for the work and I think I have energy enough to carry it through."
Hesitancy was nowhere to be found in Fred Taylor's character.
Taylor, though only 21 years old when war came
in April 1861, called a meeting and enlisted men from the neighboring countryside to serve
with him in a company of infantry. At 5' 10", the fair-skinned, dark-haired Taylor
stood a good half a head above most of the men at the meeting, and his sharp hazel eyes
helped give him a look of easy authority. The men, many of whom were much older than he,
liked what they saw in him and elected him their captain.
By the following month, Taylor and his company
were in Camp Curtin at Harrisburg, Pa. There they were placed in a regiment with some
companies of woodsmen and hunters from the mountainous areas of upstate Pennsylvania.
These men were proud of their abilities as marksmen and proclaimed such by wearing deer
tails as trophies on their hats. The new regiment was officially the Ist Pennsylvania
Rifle regiment (also known as the 42nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry), but it was
generally referred to as "the Bucktails." Taylor's men were designated Company
H, and the Bucktail regiment was made a part of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps.
The Bucktails saw little action until the
spring of 1862, when a battalion of Bucktails, including Taylor's Company H, was sent to
the Shenandoah Valley. On June 6, 1862, the Bucktails met Maj. Gen. "Stonewall"
Jackson's rear guard at Harrisonburg, Va. The fight was short, but as Confederate Maj.
Gen. Richard S. Ewell described it, "close and bloody."
The Confederate commander on the field was
Brig. Gen. Turner Ashby, and the Rebel attacks
were vigorous. Caught in a crossfire, the Bucktails broke and retreated. Taylor later
defended his men by saying that the situation had been "hopeless' " but he
himself had not run. He tried to re-form enough riflemen to get off "one good
volley" to cover the retreat, and in doing so he was overtaken by Rebels and
captured. He later learned that Ashby had been killed before the Bucktail line of battle.
Taylor's tenure as a prisoner of war was short;
he was almost immediately paroled and sent to Camp Parole in Annapolis, Md., to await
exchange. He thus missed the summer campaigns and the Battle of Second Manassas.
After the Battle of Antietam, he learned that
casualties had made him the senior officer in the regiment and that he would be in command
when he returned to it. "It will be a distinguished honor to command that old
regiment," he wrote to his brother from Camp Parole, "and I would rather be its
colonel than command half the brigades in the army." The officers and men of the
Bucktails returned his affection and signed a petition to have Taylor officially made
their colonel. Major Generals George G. Meade and John E Reynolds endorsed the petition
before it reached Pennsylvania Governor Andrew G. Curtin. The governor knew Taylor and
assented to the promotion, but the wheels of politics move slowly; several months would
pass before Taylor was promoted.
In November, Taylor was
exchanged and rejoined his men in Virginia. The 22-year-old captain took to regimental
command as though he had been born to it. At the Battle of Fredericksburg in December, the
Bucktails, with the rest of the Pennsylvania Reserves, managed to pierce Stonewall
Jackson's lines.
Lack of support forced the Pennsylvanians to
withdraw, but not before Captain Taylor had been wounded twice and had a horse killed
beneath him. So active had Taylor been on the firing line that he had drawn the
attention of his corps commander, Reynolds, who wrote in his report that Taylor had been
"conspicuous for coolness and judgment."
After Fredericksburg, Taylor and his regiment
were assigned duty on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad near Washington. During this
time, Taylor finally was commissioned a colonel and began wearing eagles on his slight
shoulders. Still, he longed for action.
In June he got his wish. After defeating the
Federals at Chancellorsville in May 1863, Lee moved northward toward Pennsylvania, and the
Bucktails were ordered to pursue. Ecstatic, Taylor wrote to his sister on June 24: "1 presume we shall have a stirring
campaign. I am very glad of it. We have been here long enough."
After a week of hot, forced marches, Taylor and the Bucktails
reached Uniontown, Md., on the night of July 1. A battle had been fought that day at
Gettysburg, Pa., several miles to the north. Reinforcements were needed, so Taylor
continued pushing the Bucktails through the night. They arrived around midday on July 2,
having covered more than 20 miles since the men last slept.
About 4 p.m., the regiments of
the Pennsylvania Reserves, under Maj. Gen. Samuel W, Crawford in the Fifth Corps, were
hurried to the northern slope of a hill called Little Round Top on the southern end of the
battlefield, where several Confederate divisions were attacking weak Federal po~itions.
From the hill, Taylor could see gray-clad infantrymen climbing the slope, and it was
clear that the Bucktails would soon be engaged. An Ohio battery in position on the left
of the Bucktails began to withdraw, but Taylor and some of his men shouted to the
gunners to keep cool and stay in position, promising to protect them and their guns. As
the Confederates closed in, the Reserves opened fire, then charged.
With the 1st Pennsylvania Reserves on their
right, the Bucktails charged down the hill and veered to the right through a boggy valley
and toward a cluster of huge, Confederate-held boulders called Devil's Den. Crawford
himself took the colors of the Ist Reserves and led the charge. Bucktail Private Richard
Beeby claimed that though he had earned a reputation as a sprinter, he could not that day
keep up with Colonel Taylor, who was in the lead from the crest of the hill, across the
marshy valley and to a stone wall on the edge of some woods several hundred yards away.
Though the woods were infested with
Confederates, Beeby saw Taylor, still running and waving his sword to encourage his men,
vault over the wall and disappear into the trees. The Bucktails surged after him and
forced the Rebels at the wall (probably the Georgians of Wofford's brigade) to either
surrender or retreat farther into the woods. The Bucktails then took cover behind the
wall.
Taylor re-formed his men at the wall. On the
left flank, a squad of Bucktails left the shelter of the wall and entered the woods to
reconnoiter. They had not gone far when they sighted about 100 Confederates moving across
their front. The Pennsylvanians ducked behind trees, and the officers tried to decide what
to do next. The party of Bucktails comprised less than 10 men, not nearly enough to attack
the large body of Rebels. Just then, Taylor himself came striding up through the woods
from the wall. Seeing the Southerners, he impetuously wished to attack. "Why don't
you fire?" he brusquely asked, and the officers replied they did not think they were
strong enough.
Accounts of what followed vary. One version
states that Taylor, seeing that the officers were right, said he would order up more men,
but was just then seen by the enemy and fired upon. Another account of the incident
states that Taylor boldly called out to the Confederates to surrender; that some of them,
startled, threw down their weapons, but that others began firing immediately. In any case,
a bullet hit Taylor squarely in the chest. Private Aaron Baker, of Taylor's old Company H,
was with the colonel when he fell. "He seemed to want to say something," wrote
Baker to Taylor's sister, "all I could understand was 'Mum,' 'Mum.'l do not think
that he lasted over two minutes."
So Fred Taylor was brought home a hero and,
like Lafayette, was laid beneath a tree in the Brandywine Valley to rest. He had been in
three battles in his career and had been a casualty in all three. An intelligent,
cultured, dedicated and ex' traordinarily brave young farmer, Taylor had, as a soldier,
won not only the affection of his men but the notice and respect of his superiors.
Surviving Bucktails helped erect two monuments
to his memory, one at Gettysburg on the spot where he fell, and the other over his grave
in Longwood Cemetery. Another friend, a neighbor in Kennett Square, had his romantic soul
stirred by Taylor's youthful courage and great promise and paid homage in verse:
Untimely, in the fearful fray
ho only asks where duty calls
Then bravely leads the ordered way.
Undaunted by the battle storm,
"Come on, come on,
boys!" he cried;
Dismayed they saw his reeling
form,
But conquered where their leader died.
Naught shall disturb that blest
Though friends may sigh and kindred weep,
His heart no pain nor sorrow knows.
And thou hast gained a sweet release;
The bugle's blast, the cannon's roar,
No more shall break thy spirit's
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