Bucktail Boys, The

DESCRIPTION: "When first our country was beset By rebels strong and bold," Pennsylvanians enlisted to fight. The regiment is led by Kane, then Biddle. They fight in Western Virginia, then return to Pennsylvania, then to Virginia proper
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1861 (Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania)
KEYWORDS: soldier battle death
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1861-1864 - career of the 13 Pennsylvania Reserves, the "Bucktails"
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 190-190, "The Bucktail Boys" (1 text)
Roud #15022
NOTES [1830 words]: Identifying the regiment involved in this song is easy; identifying the events is harder.
First, the regiment: It is the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves (officially known as the 42nd Pennsylvania, but rarely called that). They were informally known as the "Pennsylvania Bucktails." The name "bucktails," plus the mentions of Kane and Biddle, makes this certain. The name came about because they informally added a bucktail to their hats.
Folklore said that each recruit was required to supply his own bucktail to prove that he was good enough shot to kill a deer (Boatner, p. 637). I do not know if this is true, but it is certain that the regiment organized itself as a rifle regiment -- they weren't just another bunch of volunteers; they were supposed to be good shots, though it was some time before the government gave them the equipment to prove it.
The collective title "Pennsylvania Reserves" for thirteen regiments of Pennsylvania troops arose out of the peculiar circumstances at the start of the Civil War. After Fort Sumter, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers, assigning quotas to the various states. Pennsylvania's quota was about 15,000. But many more than twice that many volunteered. The Secretary of War didn't want them -- particularly from Pennsylvania; Secretary of War Cameron was a political opponent of Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin. Since the Federals wouldn't take the excess troops, Pennsylvania organized thirteen regiments of "Pennsylvania Reserves"; the regiments would serve as a unit for most of the next three years (Boatner, p. 635).
Fox, p. 261, gives this capsule account of the regiment (obviously Thomson/Rauch is much fuller): "Known also as the First Pennsylvania Rifles, or Kane Rifles. It was recruited in April 1861, from the lumbermen of the Pennsylvania forests; the men were strong and hardy, each being a skillful marksman, armed with his own rifle. The regiment was subsequently [after an uncomfortable period when they had to fight with ancient smoothbore muskets] with Sharpe's rifles [a breechloader with a higher rate of fire than the standard infantry muzzle-loader], and then again with Spencer seven-shooters [the best weapon of the war in many ways; few infantry got to have them].
"Each man wore a bucktail in his hat, and hence their name; one which became famous throughout the army, because of the extraordinary efficiency of the regiment. It took the field in June [1861], proceeding to Cumberland, Md, in which vicinity it was actively engaged on scout and picket duty until October, when it joined its division -- the Pennsylvania Reserves -- at Washington. In the spring of 1862, four companies, under Colonel Kane, served in the Shenandoah Valley, while the other [six companies] accompanied the Reserves to the Peninsula [for McClellan's Peninsular Campaign which ended in the Seven Days' Battles].
"The regiment was united again at Manassas [i.e. the second Battle of Bull Run], in which battle they were engaged, and then marched with General McClellan to Antietam, where Colonel McNiel [the regimental commander] was killed. The Bucktails met with a severe loss at Fredericksburg, their casualties amounting to 19 killed, 113 wounded, and 29 missing; total, 161 [at a time when a full-strength regiment had 800 men, and most had about 500 actually in the ranks]. At Gettysburg the brigade, led by the gallant McCandless, rendered good service near Little Round Top [losing its commanding officer, Colonel Taylor, in the battle].... The Bucktails did good work under Grant at the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, after which they were mustered out at Harrisburg, Pa., June 11, 1864, their term of service having inspired."
(It is interesting to note that, at a time when many regiments re-enlisted, most of the Bucktails did not.)
The name "Kane Rifles" arises from the regiment's organizer and sometimes-commander, Thomas Leiper Kane (1822-1883), who was a bit of a character. His father was a federal judge who once found it necessary to confine his own son for not respecting the Fugitive Slave Law (Warner, p. 256); his brother was the physician and Arctic explorer Elisha Kent Kane (Boatner, p. 448), who also had occasional problems keeping contact with reality. Thomas Kane in the late 1850s had helped negotiate peace between the Mormons and the American government (Warner, pp. 256-257) before stepping up to recruit a regiment at the start of the Civil War.
He was slightly wounded at the Battle of Dranesville on December 20, 1861, then on June 6, 1862, was wounded and captured in the Shenandoah Valley (Warner, p. 257). In September 1862, he was made a brigadier general (Phisterer, p. 277; he would be made a brevet major general in March 1865; Phisterer, p. 259, but he was out of the army by then). When he was promoted, he was assigned to a brigade in the XII corps, so he was done with the Pennsylvania Reserves. He commanded a brigade at Chancellorsville, came down with pneumonia, fled the hospital to command his brigade at Gettysburg, but then resigned due to ill health in November (Warner, p.257).
The statement in the song that the regiment was led by "the gallant Kane," but then went to Harrisburg, "Where Biddle was elected," described an unusual event in the history of the regiment. The regiment was one of those allowed to elect officers, and initially Kane was elected colonel (Thomson/Rauch; p. 31; at a time when the American regular army was very small and the supply of West Point graduates limited, choosing officers by election was normal, and the organizers of the regiments usually took the top jobs). Unlike most political officers, though, Kane recognized his lack of experience. He wanted the regiment to have a veteran commander, and so arranged a new election of officers which raised Charles J. Biddle, a Mexican War veteran, to the colonelcy. Kane was elected lieutenant colonel and second-in-command (Thomson/Rauch, p. 34).
Biddle (1819-1873) was not to stay with the regiment for very long. He was appointed brigadier general as of August 31, 1861, but did not serve; he was elected to congress and resigned from the army (Boatner, pp. 62-63; Phisterer, p. 270).
Roy Stone, who was elected major, may have had a more distinguished career than either; although he never made it to brigadier (except by brevet; Phisterer, p. 302); he commanded a brigade in the famous I Corps that served brilliantly and tragically at Gettysburg (his brevet promotion was for that battle, according to Boatner, p. 800).
Although Kane resumed command of the regiment after Biddle's resignation, it was never again, properly, "his" regiment; Hugh W. McNeil was the next man appointed colonel, and then Charles F. Taylor after McNeil was killed, and once Taylor was killed at Gettysburg, the Bucktails never had another colonel (Fox, p. 261).
The incident in the poem that took place "On the fourteenth of July, Just as day began to break," in which one Pennsylvanian was killed but the Bucktails "shot sixteen of their number" appears to be a reference to the "battle" of New Creek (I put "battle" in quotes because the battle is not listed in Phisterer's semi-official list of battles; it was more like a raid by Kane).
The Bucktails at this time were camped at Cumberland, Maryland, in the western part of the state just across the North Branch of the Potomac River from what is now West Virginia. New Creek is in West Virginia, about 25 miles southwest of Cumberland; it's perhaps twelve miles almost due west of Romney, West Virginia. There were Confederates in the vicinity, but they didn't seem to be doing anything, so Kane convinced Colonel Biddle to let him seek them out (Thomson/Rauch, p. 46). Kane selected about sixty men and went out hunting. They made their first brief foray on July 10, but returned to camp. On July 12, they scouted toward Piedmont, about five miles north of New Creek, when word came that the enemy was near New Ceek (Thomson/Rauch, pp. 47-48). Kane left ten men at Piedmont and advanced with his remaining fifty to New Creek. Kane then did something blatantly stupid that nonetheless worked: He found a secessionist minister and sent him to the local Confederate commander, Colonel McDonald, with what amounted to a challenge to come fight at New Creek (Thomson/Rauch, p. 48). The rebels, who were apparently as chuckle-headed as Kane, obliged.
The rebels had found Kane's guide, a young man named Kelly, and killed him in his sleep (the song says they shot him, but Thomson/Rauch says they cut his throat, which seems more likely since it would be soundless. Of course, it was an atrocity either way). The Confederates kept coming, and in the skirmish which followed, three Rebels were killed at once. Thomson/Rauch, p. 50, declared "Of the enemy, several of those wounded died subsequently. The attacking force must have been slightly over a hundred, and their loss in wounded about twenty."
Thus the details in the song are mostly correct, except for one glaring error: The fight took place on July 13, not July 14 as in the song. (Or maybe on July 12; I've seen web sites that make that claim.) But that's the sort of error that could easily arise. And the Bucktails did spend the next few days in the vicinity.
At the end of July, the unit started back for Pennsylvania, as in the song; after some marching, it took a train to Harrisburg on July 30 (Thomson/Rauch, p. 54). The units were finally mustered into Federal service after the First Battle of Bull Run (Thomson/Rauch, pp. 55-58), when the federal government realized it needed more men. Which is the last interesting thing to happen to the Bucktails prior to October 1861, when Shoemaker claims the song was written -- and certainly it does not appear to refer to events after that.
To that point, the war had been rather a lark -- the men had had to do a lot of marching, had been given poor food and equipment, had suffered their share of disease, but had had no casualties to speak of. Some of them had even gotten to make river rafts to join the rest of the regiment! Life would not stay as fun. Men of the Bucktails would fight in the Shenandoah Valley, in the Seven Days, at Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, and the early parts of the Wilderness Campaign -- some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Fox, p. 261, calculates that, in all, 1165 men served in the regiment. 162 were killed in combat and 90 died of disease -- 22% of the total. And many more were wounded and maimed.
The claim that this song was sung by men of McKean, Potter, and Tioga counties might possibly be used to figure out more about just who sang this song; Companies A and E of the Bucktails was recruited in Tioga County (Thomson/Rauch, pp. 18, 23), and some of the other companies may have come from those counties though some definitely did not. This would require research into just which towns were part of which counties in 1861, which was more work than I cared to do! - RBW
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