Hoffsommer, Robert D. "The Bucktails." Civil War Times Illustrated 4 (January 1966)

THOMAS LEIPER KANE, thirty-nine-year-old of the town in the lumber district of northwestern Pennsylvania that Still bears his name, was the first to do something about the impending war even before the President's call for 75,000 volunteers after the fall of Fort Sumter With the blessing of energetic Governor Andrew G. Curtin he began the recruiting of a "rifle" company from two counties--Mc Kean and Elk--of the so-called Wildcat District.Incidentally the term Wildcat derived not so much from the four-footed variety as from the boisterous, uninhibited nature of the hardy lumbermen who harvested the virgin timber and rafted it each spring down the Susquehanna. Nor was he alone. All along ,the northern tier of counties similar companies were being formed rapidly.
      To the young woodsmen, almost isolated from the rest of the world in those mountainous regions, the response to the call to arms owed not so much to patriotic desire to save the Union as to youthful exuberance--a craving for adventure and glory, and a chance to see the world. There would be more than enough of all three in the next few years, but just now war was a thing of high romance. They would soon learn better, but even three years of combat would not completely dull that zest and the spirit that soon won them their reputation as a great fighting unit.

THE BUCKTAILS started out with an advantage over such groups as the Iron Brigade and the Stonewall Brigade in that they adopted their distinctive name even before being formally organized as a regiment at Camp Curtin, just north of Harrisburg, the state capital. It came about very naturally, yet with a touch of inspiration. One day as Kane glanced idly from his recruiting headquarters at Smethport he observed a just-enrolled lumberjack stroll across the street to examine with expert eye a newly killed buck hung outside a butcher shop. The animal had a tail larger than usual; the recruit impulsively cut it off and tucked it in his hatband. And there is where the inspiration came in.
    "That's it!" cried Kane. "We'll call ourselves Bucktails."
    The idea caught on spontaneously. In a short time every member of the new company sported a tuft of deer hair in his hat, and when Kane's company marched over the mountains and joined the Cameron County contingent at Emporium and next day added the hundred Elk County men at Driftwood, bucktails or their equivalent sprouted promptly above the red or checkered shirts that most of the woodsmen wore.
    With no rail connections at Driftwood, Kane's three companies of lumbermen solved the problem of transportation in typical fashion. They bought lumber at a local mill, built four rafts (one large enough to accommodate Kane's horse), and floated down the Sinnamahoning to Lock Haven and the railroad. Other scattered companies from the Wildcat District headed for Harrisburg via rowboats down the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, whence they came overland by train, or lumber wagons over mountain roads to the nearest rail line.

BY THE MIDDLE of May about 700 Wildcats were making their unruly presence known at Camp Curtin. They wanted to form a regiment but lacked three companies. This need was reduced to two when a company made tip entirely of single men from Clearfield County joined them in petitioning Governor Andrew Curtin. This gain was canceled when a Tioga County company pulled out of the group, but the lure of "rifle regiment" and the bucktail emblem drew three companies from Perry, Chester (both downstate counties), and Carbon, and the roster was complete.
    Though mustered in earlier as companies, on June 13 the Bucktail Regiment was enrolled in state service as the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves, also named the 1st Pennsylvania Rifles, Pennsylvania Volunteer Reserve Corps. Later, on petition, it became the Kane Rifle Regiment; and still later, officially, the 42d Pennsylvania Volunteers. Following the custom of the time, the regiment elected Kane as their colonel; he promptly resigned in favor of Charles J. Biddle, a pint-sized Mexican War veteran who Kane felt had the qualifications for whipping the Bucktails into shape. Kane became lieutenant colonel and Roy Stone, who had led the rowboat contingent down the Allegheny, became major. Of the several leaders of the Bucktails, these three contributed most in making the Bucktails what they became, though actually the colorful personality of the regiment derived from the enlisted men themselves.
   The company names, chosen in the fanciful romanticism of that early war period, illustrate the fascination the term "rifle" had for these embryonic soldiers. From A to K they were Anderson Life Guards, Morgan Rifles, Cameron Rifles, Raftsman Guards, Tioga Rifles, Irish Infantry, Elk Rifles, Wayne Independent Rifles, McKean Rifles, and Raftsmen's Rangers. By way of anticlimax, however, after they had been ordered tosend their own rifles home the weapons issued were 1837 Harpers Ferry muskets. Only Colonel Biddle's persuasive powers averted a mutiny. It was not until after the Seven Days that they received Sharps repeaters. For this they could thank Governor Curtin, as well as for the fight he won with the War Department to have the Reserve Corps enter national service as a unit.

ON JUNE 22 the Bucktails were off to the war--or so they thought. But they found themselves at Camp Mason and Dixon, near Cumberland, Maryland but still in Pennsylvania. Here Company.F the effervescent Irish Infantry, planted its colors momentarily south of the famous Line as the first Reserves colors to leave the state; and Biddle got in some much needed drill. During the next month they moved into Maryland and got shaken down as a regiment by some long marches, a lot of scouting, and a small clash with Reb cavalry. Then, still not mustered into national service (technically, in they never were), they were ordered back to Harrisburg.
    They were only briefly at Camp Curtin before being ordered south again, but long enough to establish their reputation as the Reserves' most unmanageable regiment. Their route took them through Baltimore, where in the first month of the war the 6th Massachusetts had been attacked by a pro-Southern mob on its way to the Capital Biddle,wanting no repetition of this incident, ordered guns to be unloaded in the march from station to station. The men also remembered the April affair and calmly ignored the order. Fortunately for their fiery little colonel's faith in military discipline, nothing happened.
   At Camp Tennally near the northwest corner of the District of Columbia, the Bucktails were brigaded under George Gordon Meade. It was at this time that they came nearest to being properly mustered into Federal service. When an Army paymaster arrived on October 7 the Bucktails, flat broke since their last state pay on leaving Camp Curtin confidently expected to be paid with the rest of the brigade. But there was that one hitch-they never been formally mustered. The paymaster suggested the obvious solution: send for a mustering officer. But that would have dated the muster as of that time, and no pay would have been forthcoming then. Biddle wasn't having any of that. The regiment had, to all practical purposes, been in Fed service for three months. If there was to be no pay he would march his men back to Harrisburg. This seemed too ridiculous a situation even for an army which specialized in absurd technicalities, and so bright mind cut the Gordian knot with the suggestion of an undated muster in the name of the Secretary of War. So it was done, but Meade never accepted what was to him a subterfuge; he wrote later that the 1st Pennsylvania Rifles were never mustered into United States service.

SHORTLY AFTER this incident, McCall's three- division of Pennsylvania Reserves moved to Call,,) Pierpont near Langley, Virginia, where the ,peculiar skills of the Iumbermen-hunters made them scouts for the division. During a scout one day in ,he neighborhood of nearby Hunter's Mills, Kane ordered three men to pick off a Reb cavalryman bill[ a mile away who neglected to take cover with his companions. At this distance, incredible to the average town-bred citizen-soldier, the three shots toppled the Confederate from his horse. The story got around, and may have influenced the choice of the Bucktails as skirmishers to accompany General Edward 0. C. Ord's expedition to Dranesville to intercept Stuart's foraging party.
   Dranesville was the Wildcat's first real fight. With Kane in command (Biddle had resigned to enter Congress), tile Bucktails formed line of battle on the left of tile Centreville Road; tile 6th and 9th Reserves continued the line to the west, or right of the road. Stuart had it battery astride the road, enfilading it to prevent reinforcement, and ordered a three-regiment attack oil the Bucktails to turn the Union left. Using it strategically located brick house its it strong point the Pennsylvanians broke tip the Confederate charge. Shortly after, its it result of this repulse and the good work of Easton's battery which Ord had brought along. the Bucktails were part of a vigorous charge which finally drove the Confederates from the field. The bucktailed Ist Rifles had missed the defeats at First Bull Run and Ball's Bluff, but at Dranesville the)- had performed-to use 'McClellan's word-brilliantly and the regiment's fame spread through the army and a victory-hungry North.
   The Bucktails had "seen the elephant"; now they settled down to a muddy winter camp. In characteristic Wildcat fashion, to relieve boredom they devised a new kind of rabbit hunt, the object being to surround the rabbit and catch him barehanded. Once as the regiment was standing Sunday morning inspection a ]one fox appeared on the parade ground. In seconds discipline evaporated as with wildcat yells the men broke ranks for a fox hunt. Reynard was caught, but what happened to the hunters is not recorded. But you can't put a whole regiment in the guardhouse.

WITH THE coming of spring the real war began for the Bucktails. Four companies were detached and sent to the Shenandoah Valley under Kane to chase the elusive Jackson. Here they distinguished themselves as riflemen-skirmishers under a new system devised by Kane. Incidentally, it was a Bucktail bullet that ended Turner Ashby's promising career. The other six companies, still in McCall's division, marked time in the neighborhood of Falmouth. But on June 6 they were on their way to the Peninsula, where McClellan had been begging for the division since April.
    They arrived just in time for the fireworks. As part of Fitz-John Porter's V Corps, the Bucktails and two companies of Berdan's Sharpshooters mowed down every Confederate attack on their part of the Beaver Dam Creek line with-to the Rebs-unYankeelike accuracy, and when the order for withdrawal to near Gaines's Mill was given it was the Ist Rifles and the Sharpshooters who held the post of honor and danger as the rearguard. The Bucktails got little rest. Next day at Gaines's Mill their accurate fire held their part of the line, but Hood's Texans broke through on the Union left. Porter pulled back across the Chickahominy and once more the Ist Rifles served in the rearguard. Dogtired from two battles and constant marching in one short week, the remnants of the Bucktails were for a time a little island of resistance at Frayser's Farm in yet another rearguard action of the battered V Corps to gain time for the withdrawal of the main body of the army. Though finally overwhelmed, they bought time for McClellan to reach the James. Then it was on to Harrison's Landing and a well-earned rest.

FROM HERE to the end of their three-year enlistment their story is practically that of the Army of the Potomac. Second Bull Run, where once more they were rearguard, this time at the Stone Bridge; South Mountain, for their second taste of victory; Antietam, where they lost recently elected Colonel Hugh McNeil in the East Wood and fought bloodily in the D. R. Miller cornfield. Then it was Fredericksburg, in Meade's unsupported breakthrough on the Confederate right; Gettysburg, where their latest colonel died-twenty-three-year-old Charles F. Taylor, youngest colonel in the Army of the Potomac-and where their proud Bucktails monument now stands on Devil's Den Ridge southeast of the Wheatfield; then, under Major Ross Hartshorne, the Mine Run Campaign, The Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and finally Bethesda Church in May 1864, only six miles from the Beaver Dam Creek line where they had fought two years before.
    They had come full-circle in more ways than geographically. From naive greenness they had become battle-wise, reliable veterans, repeatedly singled out for commendation, even by the usually reticent Meade. They had served under a half dozen regimental commanders, each of whom contributed something of value to the composite image of the regiment, but in the end it was the men themselves who gave the color and individuality that set the unit apart. In an army notable for wasting lead, their accurate fire made them dreaded opponents; at South Mountain a captured Confederate officer disgustedly admitted that his men had broken and run when they learned they were facing the Bucktails. Wild and undisciplined in idleness, reflecting the freedom of the lumber camps and hunters' cabins from which they came, they had an innate sturdiness borne of that free life that made them excellent skirmishers and cool, resourceful fighters in battle. They were not ordinary men; they could not be ordinary soldiers.

THE REST is quickly told. At the end of their three-years' service, over 150 Bucktails chose to reenlist; they became part of the 190th Pennsylvania. The others returned to Camp Curtin for mustering out-and one final demonstration of Wildcat independence. Told that the Bucktails would be subject to all regulation camp duty, acting colonel McDonald calmly informed the authorities that his men Were not doing any, after fighting for three years, and that if rations were withheld his -veterans still had their weapons and were used to foraging. The hint was plain; they got rations and did no duty. Then, at last, never having been mustered into Federal service, they were mustered out. Their youthful exuberance still unquenched, they went home to riotous wel- comes; and their return journey, with wildcat yells and horseplay, was almost a duplication of the trip three years before to Camp Curtin.
    Cool, self-reliant, individualistic, careless of discipline, casually profane, irrepressibly frolicsome they were all of these, yet when the chips were down they had constituted one of the most efficient reliable cogs in the great military machine that the Army of the Potomac.