Bucktails
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The Bucktails may refer to one of two organizations that were particularly characterized and identified by the wearing of a bucktail in their headgear.
1) The Bucktails (1818–1826), were a New York State party opposed to the canal policy of Governor DeWitt Clinton. It was influenced by the Tammany Society. The party's name comes from a Tammany insignia, a deer's tail worn in the hat. The name was in use as early as 1791 when a bucktail worn on the headgear was adopted as the "official badge" of the Tammany Society. The wearing of the bucktall was said to have been suggested by its appearance in the costume of the Tammany Indians in the vicinity of New York.
2) Also, during the American Civil War, the members of the 42nd Pennsylvania Infantry were widely known in the Union Army as Bucktails because each soldier wore a bucktail in his hat. The flagstaff of the companies which formed the nucleus of this regiment was a green hickory pole surmounted by a bucktail.
[edit] Reference
Adams, James Truslow, Dictionary of American History. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940
