Townsend, George Alfred, Rustics in Rebellion; A Yankee Reporter on the Road to Richmond, 1861-1865. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press (1950) 15-16.

I had an opportunity after dinner to inspect the camp of the "Bucktails," a regiment of Pennsylvania backwoodsmen, whose efficiency as skirmishers has been adverted to by all chroniclers of the Civil War. They wore the common blue blouse and breeches, but were distinguished by squirrel tails fastened to their caps. They were reputed to be the best marksmen in the service, and were generally allowed, in action, to take their own positions and fire at will. Crawling through thick woods, or trailing serpentlike through the tangled grass, these mountaineers were, for a time the terror of the Confederates; but when their mode of fighting had been understood, their adversaries improved upon it to such a degree that at the date of this writing there is scarcely a corporal's guard of the original regiment remaining. Slaughtered on the field perishing in prison, disabled or paroled, they have lost both their prestige and their strength. I remarked among these worthies a partiality for fisticuffs, and a dislike for the manual of arms. They drilled badly, and were reported to be adepts at thieving and unlicensed foraging.

---