On May 13, Wheat was ordered to move his rowdy companies to Camp Moore, in northern Louisiana. Wheat hoped to attract four more companies to his command to form a full regiment, but he was unsuccessful. His rough Zouaves actually repelled potential allies. One man wrote of Wheat’s Tigers: “I got my first glimpse at Wheat’s Battalion from New Orleans. They were all Irish and were dressed in Zouave dress, and were familiarly known as Louisiana Tigers, and tigers they were too in human form. I was actually afraid of them, afraid I would meet them somewhere in camp and that they would do to me like they did to Tom Lane of my company; knock me down and stamp me half to death.”

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Wheat was forced to stand by while seven other men with less military experience were commissioned colonels and their assembled companies were mobilized into Confederate service in regiments. Spurred to desperate action, he decided to make a deal with state officials to commission him a major and to recognize his four companies temporarily as the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion. With his status thus secured, Wheat hoped to attract four or five more companies and become the colonel of the soon-to-be organized 8th Louisiana Regiment.

In the political wrangling that followed, Henry Kelly, not Wheat, became commander of the 8th Louisiana. With Kelly’s ascension, Captain J.W. Buhoup’s company of Catahoula Guerrillas voted to leave Kelly’s command and throw in their lot with Wheat’s special battalion. Unlike the rest of the battalion, the Catahoula Guerrillas consisted of sons of wealthy planters, doctors and lawyers from Catahoula Parish in northern Louisiana. Outfitted in dark-gray battle shirts and blue kepis, they were complete social opposites from Wheat’s New Orleans dockworkers.

By June 6, Wheat felt that he could no longer wait for regimental command. He resolved to take the five companies that he had, about 415 men total, muster them into Confederate service and head for Virginia. In so doing, he gave up his bid to form a regiment from his special battalion, and his unit was officially named the 2nd Louisiana Battalion by state officials. To the officers and men of the battalion, however, they would always be known as the 1st Louisiana Special Battalion, or simply as Wheat’s Tigers.

On June 13, Wheat’s battalion entrained for Virginia. Passing through Mississippi and Tennessee, the Tigers arrived at Manassas Junction, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard’s assembly area, on June 20. As the men disembarked at the depot, some soldiers from the 18th Virginia Regiment noticed that several of the Tigers had been bucked and gagged for disorderly conduct.

The battalion was subsequently assigned to Colonel Philip St. George Cocke’s brigade, stationed well forward of the army, north of Centreville. Upon arrival, Wheat requested the honor of holding the most advanced position of the Confederate Army. Cocke obliged and sent the Tigers up to Frying Pan Church, just south of the Potomac River. The Tigers were in fact so close to the Potomac, the northern boundary of the Confederate States, that they could hear the Yankees’ 4th of July celebration in Washington.

Wheat and his Tigers were not alone for long. They were joined by two troops of Virginia cavalry under Captains John D. Alexander and William R. Terry and by Colonel J.B. Sloan’s 4th South Carolina Infantry. The whole lot, probably to Wheat’s dismay, was put under the command of Colonel Nathan Evans of South Carolina. Evans’ men began conducting light infantry operations, patrolling and setting up ambushes.

While at Frying Pan Church, the battalion fought its first action on July 14. The Federals tried to force a crossing at Seneca Falls on the Potomac, 15 miles northwest of Washington. The place happened to be guarded by Company B of the Tiger Rifles. “They had a nice little skirmish,” Wheat reported, “killing three of the enemy and [their] loss was one man shot in the leg (both legs broken).” Zouave James Burnes was the man wounded in the engagement, making him the first of the battalion’s many battle casualties.

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