With a courage that belied their inexperience in combat, Pennsylvania's volunteer Bucktail Brigade fought to the end in the battle for McPherson's Ridge.
Though finally retreating in the face of superior Confederate numbers, the Bucktails' brave defense bought precious time for Union reinforcements to arrive at Gettysburg and ultimately turn the battle in this pivotal engagement of the Civil War.
Two-thirds of the brigade became casualties that afternoon of July 1, 1863, the first day of the Gettysburg conflict. Gallantry and an inspired battlefield ruse would not be enough to prevail.
That sanguine confrontation of Union and Confederate forces will be re-created by Civil War re-enactors at 11 a.m. July 6 at Pumping Station Road in Gettysburg.
Colorful and untraditional, the original Pennsylvania Bucktails unit was formed in 1861 as a state reserve infantry regiment by the fiery abolitionist Thomas L. Kane.
Largely made up of sharpshooting backwoodsmen from the mountainous northern "wildcat" counties, the regiment acquired its badge and nickname when a private stuck a piece of deer hide in his hatband as decoration.
'Hardy yeomanry'
"Hardy yeomanry of the counties of Forest, Elk, and McKean, for the most part lumbermen, clad in red flannel shirts and wearing each in his hat a buck's tail," was how Samuel Bates described these soldiers in his 1869 account, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers. "No one was accepted who did not prove himself a skilled marksman."
After service in the Virginia campaign in 1862, the greatly depleted Bucktails regiment returned to Pennsylvania well-known for its exploits and its distinctive headgear.
But the Union's devastating defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run compelled federal military leaders to appeal to states for more manpower.
Col. Roy Stone was authorized to organize a full Bucktails brigade, hoping to build on the reputation of the original. It comprised the 143rd, 149th and 150th Pennsylvania Volunteer regiments, mostly made up of eager but untested recruits.
Early arrivals
At Gettysburg, Stone's Bucktails were called in to support Maj. Gen. Abner Doubleday's Union 1st Corps, which was struggling to counter Confederate attackers at McPherson's Ridge.
The 1,250-man unit marched to the ridge at 11 a.m. July 1, joining the brigades of Brig. Gen. Solomon Meredith and Lt. Col. Thomas Carter, which had been engaged by Confederate forces early in the day.
Stone's men were assigned to defend McPherson's farm, directly to the right of Meredith's Iron Brigade.
They were to occupy a prominent position in the center of the 1st Corps line, which formed an inverted L-shape. Reaching that position, however, proved difficult. The brigade had to pass through an open field in order to reach the farm and, while mobilizing, endured heavy enemy fire and suffered substantial early casualties.
Despite this vulnerable positioning, the Pennsylvania regiments held steady. Approximately two-thirds of the Bucktails were facing west, posted along McPherson lane; the rest lay along Chambersburg Pike, directed northward.
After waiting for nearly two hours, a Confederate division led by Maj. Gen. Henry Heth began its advance onto McPherson's Ridge at 1 p.m.
The Confederate troops finally numbered more than 25,000; the Union army counted 18,000. The arrival of such numerous reinforcements made an engagement inevitable, a step that Gen. Robert E. Lee had been avoiding until that point.
Capt. J.H. Bassler, in The Color Episode of the One Hundred and Forty-Ninth Regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteers, published in 1909, set the scene:
"The enemy's reinforcements were now arriving on the field. The first intimation we had of it was the fire of one of their batteries (Carter's) stationed on Oak Hill, north of us. The crash of a shell through the tops of the old cherry trees along the lane admonished our commander that we were exposed to an enfilade fire that might do us great damage."
Greatly outnumbered, Stone's forces were shelled continuously for two hours.
The Confederate attacks incorporated both long-range musketry and sharpshooting fire, primarily from the west and the north. The offensive was led by Col. John M. Brockenbrough's Virginians, Brig. Gen. Joseph Davis' Mississippians and Brig. Gen. Junius Daniel's North Carolinians.
Brockenbrough's troops moved quickly through Willoughby Run to make initial contact. But the colonel sent in only one or two regiments at a time, hoping to preserve strength for a final push.
The Bucktails, positioned behind solid rail fences, took advantage of this ill-planned strategy and rained heavy rifle and artillery fire on the advancing Confederates. It was all Brockenbrough could do to withstand the Union counterattack until his reinforcements arrived.
Brig. Gen. Rufus R. Dawes, with the 6th Wisconsin, praised the Pennsylvanians' bravery.
'More than heroic'
"The first brunt of the attack struck the gallant brigade of Bucktails. Yet, they were fighting on Pennsylvania soil. Their conduct was more than heroic, it was glorious. I cannot describe the charges and counter-charges which took place, but we all saw the banner of the 150th Pennsylvania [Regiment] planted in the ground and waving between the hostile lines of battle, while the desperate fight went on."
Stone, however, soon became frustrated at the immobility of his troops. As the primary target of heavy Confederate fire, his brigade would soon be annihilated if action was not taken quickly.
Insistent on reclaiming the battle, Stone devised a plan to give his forces an edge. The 149th would plant its colors 50 yards northwest of its current position in an effort to deceive the Confederate gunners and draw fire away from the Pennsylvania troops.
As Bassler, commander of the color guard, described it:
"In this position our flags were plainly visible over the standing wheat, to the battery west of us, but the rail piles and men behind them were hid from their view; and, evidently thinking that the regiment had changed front, they now diverted their fire in that direction. Stone's ruse had succeeded."
"The colors of the 149th were a target for the 34 guns which practically enfiladed the regiment from the Ridge beyond the Run and when they had got the range, there was no safety for the regiment from quick destruction, but in confusion and deceiving the enemy to its location," Stone recalled.
"My plan was to fire a volley or two from the edge of the railroad cut and bring the regiment back under cover of the smoke, leaving the colors to draw the fire of the batteries. But the movement, as it was executed, had greater results than I hoped. It deceived the enemy in our front also, with the idea that we had force enough to take the offensive, and they delayed their final attack on that account."
Certain that they now had the advantage, the Confederates began closing in about 3 p.m. Daniel was the most aggressive, attempting three separate times to send troops onto the ridge.
Yet each time the company was halted, first by Union Col. Henry S. Huidekoper's six companies, then by the confusion of colors, and finally by a counter-movement of the Bucktails. Davis' brigade, after similar attempts, likewise failed.
Confederate pressure
Lt. Gen. Ambrose P. Hill, on the direct order of Lee, then sent in a dual attack, with Brockenbrough's brigade on the left and Brig. Gen. James Johnston Pettigrew's North Carolinians on the right. This movement resulted in heavy bloodshed, particularly in Brockenbrough's unit, and left both sides damaged and disordered. Stone, himself, fell wounded.
In the end, sheer numbers told the tale. The Union troops were outflanked, outnumbered and outgunned. Forced to admit defeat, the 1st Corps line retreated in stages to Seminary Ridge, through Gettysburg, and finally to Cemetery Hill.
The Bucktails, in the center of the line, were among the last brigades to withdraw, remaining until it was known that the Iron Brigade had retired and the Pennsylvanians were in danger of being encircled.
"We slowly fell back, firing as we went, and at the bottom of the slope again halted and formed a line, and when the rebels came over the brow of the hill we gave them a volley, which, for the moment, staggered them. [T]hen we charged up the slope, but we were forced back and crossed the valley below the Seminary," Sgt. W.R. Ramsey told John Bachelder, who recorded it in the Bachelder Papers of 1863.
The Bucktails lost 850 of their 1,250 men. Every field officer, save one, was killed or seriously wounded. Stone later paid tribute to his brigade: "No language can do justice to the conduct of my officers and men on that bloody first day, the coolness with which they watched and awaited. Under a fierce storm of shot and shell, the approach of the enemy's overwhelming masses, from their ready obedience to orders, and the prompt and perfect execution, under fire, of all the tactics of the battlefield, to the fierceness of their repeated attacks, and to the desperate tenacity of their resistance."
Upon retreat, the Bucktails were convinced that they had fought the Battle of Gettysburg.
In the following days, however, as the McPherson farm buildings were transformed into a hospital for the thousands of additional wounded soldiers from both sides, they realized that, with them, the battle had only just begun.
Moira Curran is a senior majoring in communications at Loyola College in Baltimore; this article was written as part of a practicum at The Sun.
Commanders of the Bucktails
The commanding officer of the Bucktails brigade at the outset of the fighting at Gettysburg was Col. Roy Stone. Stone was appointed major of the 13th Pennsylvania Reserves on June 21, 1861, and colonel of the 149th Pennsylvania Regiment on Aug. 30, 1862.
Stone received a brevet promotion to brigadier general Sept. 7, 1862. He was discharged from the Army Dec. 31, 1898.
The Bucktails brigade at Gettysburg included about 1,300 men in the 143rd, 149th and 150th Pennsylvania regiments.
The three regiments had been formed in 1862 and had seen fighting at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, but Gettysburg was their first real battlefield test.
Stone was wounded in the arm and hip about 2:30 p.m. and left behind when the brigade retreated.
Succeeding Stone as commander of the Bucktails was Col. Langhorne Wister, shown here wearing the distinctive Bucktails headgear.
Wister also was wounded in the fighting, and in 1905 he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery on July 1, 1863, according to David G. Martin in Gettysburg July 1.
He was appointed a brevet brigadier general after Gettysburg and resigned from the Army 0n Feb. 22, 1864.