CURTIN CALLED

During four years of carnage on hundreds of Civil War battlefields, a handful of units earned reputations as elite, battle-hardened forces. Soldiers in these units prided themselves on their regiment, brigade, or division’s reputation and laurels, often earned at considerable sacrifice. The Iron Brigade, the Stonewall Brigade, and Cleburne’s Division, for instance, garnered respect during the war and continue to retain popular appeal and reverence. Yet few units stand as distinguished as the Pennsylvania Reserves in the Army of the Potomac.

Through grinding campaigns, high casualty rates, and army reorganizations, the Pennsylvania Reserves served and fought as a division consisting exclusively of Pennsylvania regiments. Far from a reserve or militia unit, as commonly misperceived, the Pennsylvania Reserves saw combat in nearly every significant campaign in the war’s Eastern Theater between December 1861 and May 1864.

In the wake of Fort Sumter, tens of thousands of men throughout the North enthusiastically responded to Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers, and Pennsylvania offered the War Department 25 regiments of approximately 25,000 volunteers. Meanwhile, concerned with the state’s vulnerability to a possible Confederate invasion, Governor Andrew Curtin, a Republican governor elected in 1860, called the state legislature into special session. On May 15, 1861, the legislature authorized the creation of the Reserve Volunteer Corps of the Commonwealth. Funded by state money, the Pennsylvania Reserves would be used in “suppressing insurrections, or to repel invasions” and could be mustered into federal service, “if necessary.”

Curtin first offered the command of the Pennsylvania Reserves to George McClellan. Although McClellan, a Philadelphian, had expressed interest in the command, he had just accepted command of the Ohio militia. Curtin then turned to 59-year-old George McCall. A Philadelphian, West Point graduate, and Mexican War veteran,