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BUCKTAILED WILDCATS
The informal inefficiency of the early Civil War may not have quickly produced good
fighting units. It did, however, permit the development of what might be called regimental
personality. From the slipshod, makeshift methods of raising and training the first armies
there emerged a goodly number of unusual outfits on both sides. These regiments gradually
became efficient fighting organizations without losing their individualities.
Of
all the unusual combat units of the War Between the States none was more colorful than the
Bucktails. In the spring of 1861, down from the pine-clad mountains of northern
Pennsylvania, by raft, by row boat, by cattle cars, came a group of young men destined to
form the large nucleus of a regiment which history has designated as famous. Made up
largely of rough, hardy lumbermen, they had their own peculiar wildcat yell and a
distinctive insignia bobbing from every hat that set them apart from all the rest of the
eager recruits of the early war.
Three
years later the survivors (that is those who did not sign up for another hitch) went back
to the Wildcat District of Pennsylvania. Chastened by much hard fighting, they were still
full of the flavor of pine and hemlock, the color of the swift deer, and the sound of the
bobcat.
Years after the Civil War, their
regimental history was written by a member from downstate Carbon County. The writer had
been a Bucktail but he had never been a Bucktailed Wildcat. He could not capture much of
the color of the upstate lumberman turned soldier. That is what this book tries to do.
E. A. G.
1
The Wildcat District in the Spring of '61 15
2 Regimental Growing Pains
25
3 "All Over Camp Curtin"
33
4 Militia on Manuever
40
5 Without Benefit of Muster
47
6 A Big Review and a Little Fight
56
7 A Winter of Mud
66
8 "On to Richmond?"
74
9 War in Earnest
81
10 "But the Field Was Not the
Battle" 92
11 Tired, Hungry, and Lousy
107
12 "Utterly Used Up, Except the
Bucktails" 114
13 A Pawn in the Chess Game of Battle
122
14 From the Plains to the Mountain
133
15 Sweet Taste of Victory
143
16 Carnage in a Cornfield
153
17 "Mac" Gone, Sharps Going?
Bounty Men Coming? 162
18 Sad December Saturday
170
19 Mud, Mosby, and the Lights of
Washington 179
20 Back to Pennsylvania
190
21 Sickles Sets the Stage
198
22 "War is a Passionate Drama"
209
23 Ballots for Bullets
217
24 Meandering with Meade
225
25 Springtime in the Wilderness
234
26 Weary Race to the Courthouse
243
27 Through the Mud to the left
251
28 An End to Fighting
261
29 Tough Wildcats---Swift Deer---Tall
Pines 270
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