The Bucktails (1818–1826) were the faction of the Democratic-Republican Party in the US state of New York opposed to Governor DeWitt Clinton.
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 bucktail was said to have been suggested by its appearance in the costume of the Tammany Indians in the vicinity of New York.
When Van Buren’s Bucktails won control of the New York legislature in 1821, they acquired the power to appoint some six thousand of their friends to positions in New York’s legal bureaucracy of judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, deed commissioners, and coroners.
Critics called this ruthless distribution of offices a spoils system, but Van Buren argued that it was fair, operating “sometimes in favor of one party, sometimes of another”.