Confederate wizards of the saddle /

by Bennett H. Young

Shelby’s Raid into Missouri in September, 1863, which lasted thirty-six days and involved marching fifteen hundred miles, an average of thirty miles per day, is a story of extraordinary skill and endurance.

Stuart’s Chickahominy raid around McClellan’s army, his march to Chambersburg and return, and the Battle of Fleetwood Hill will ever command the admiration of cavalry students.

Hampton’s Trevilian campaign, his cattle raid, and the management of General Lee’s cavalry before Petersburg point to him as a leader of wondrous enterprise, a soldier of unbounded daring and a strategist of great ability.

The cavalry generals who have been chosen as the chief subjects of this book all possessed, in a remarkable degree, the power of winning the confidence of their followers and their loyal support under all circumstances. With Hampton, men followed wherever he led, they never reasoned why they should go, they only asked that they be informed as to the will of their leader. And so it was true of Morgan, Stuart, Forrest, Shelby and Wheeler. They all had the absolute trust of their followers. No man beneath them in command ever questioned their wisdom or their judgment in battle or march. But when it came to inspiring men with the spirit of absolute indifference to death and relentlessness in the pursuit of the enemy, few would deny that Nathan Bedford Forrest did this more effectively than any leader who was engaged in the struggle. Generals Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnson, Joseph E. Johnston always commanded the respect, devotion, love and admiration of their soldiers to such an extent that at any time they would have marched into the very jaws of death, under their leadership; but those who study the life and the extent of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s achievements will generally agree that in inspiring his soldiers to fierce, persistent battle and absolute indifference in conflict, few, if any, equalled him, none surpassed him. The conduct of his soldiers at Bryce’s Cross-roads, where he fought first cavalry and then infantry, sometimes mounted, most generally on foot, would show that he could exact from men as superb service as any soldier who ever led his followers into battle.

This suggestion as to Forrest does not detract from the glory of any other Confederate leader. We meet this almost hypnotic influence in many phases of life other than military. Those who study the actions and characteristics of General Forrest and who looked upon the faces of the men following him could but realize that by his bearing, example and dash he got the best and bravest that it was possible for human nature in war to give.

Romance, patriotism and love of adventure inspired the cavalry of the Confederacy to follow their renowned leaders. No man who has calmly read the stories of the conflicts and marches of the Army of Northern Virginia, or the Army of Tennessee, or of the Army of the Trans-Mississippi Department can fail to be filled with wonder at the duties the soldiers of these armies so cheerfully and so willingly performed. Without pay, illy clad and poorly fed, yet they were always brave. Though hungry in battle they were always courageous; and in conflict they had only one aim, and that was to defend their country and destroy its enemies.

There was much in the narratives of the South’s past to inspire cavalrymen with Lighthorse Harry Lee valor. Their fathers and grandfathers had ridden with Marion and Sumpter, had fought with Shelby, Preston, Sevier and Campbell at King’s Mountain, or had gone with Isaac Shelby and General Harrison into Canada to fight the Battle of the Thames, or composed the dragoons who had gone with Scott and Taylor to Mexico. The boys and young men of the South had read and reread the accounts of what these horsemen of the long ago had accomplished, of the dangers they had faced and the laurels they had won, and these records of a splendid past filled their hearts with deepest love of their country, and fired their souls to make achievements the equal of those of their renowned ancestry. The most romantic and chivalrous side of both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 had their happenings with horsemen, and the most of those were either on the Southern soil or came from the states which sympathized with the South.

It was this antecedent history that gave such impetus to the Confederate youth to find, if possible, a place in the cavalry. The men of the South were not only familiar with the use of firearms, but a majority of them were skilled horsemen, and these two things combined brought to the Confederate cavalry volunteers, active, adventurous, daring, reckless, vigilant, chivalrous soldiers that were bound to perform the highest type of military work.

In the American war, cavalry was to change its arms, the sabre was to be almost entirely eliminated. In its place was to come the revolver and the repeating rifle, the magazine gun and the short Enfield. The holsters were to be abandoned. Instead, the belt with the six shooters and the sixty rounds of ammunition. These new cavalrymen were not only to serve as scouts, but to act as infantry, to cover military movements, to destroy the lines of communication, to burn stores, to tear up lines of railway, to gather supplies, to fight gunboats, capture transports; all these without any equipment of any kind, except their horses, their arms and some horse artillery of limited range. In a large part, they were to feed in the enemy’s country, rely upon their foes for arms and ammunition. They were to have no tents; no wagons, except for ammunition; no cooking utensils, other than a wrought iron skillet. These, with canteens and food found on the march, were to prove their only means of subsistence. They were to be trained to ride incessantly, charge stockades, capture forts, take their place alongside of the infantry on the battle line, and to build or defend hastily constructed fortifications. No cavalry before had performed these services and none will ever perform them again. The newer conditions of warfare will change altogether the work that will be required of cavalry. The improvement in firearms, particularly in the artillery, would render the oldtime cavalry superfluous and its use, under the past methods, a simple slaughter without benefit.

These men, carried by horses with great celerity from place to place, were to perform a distinct and different service in war; sometimes in a single night they would march fifty miles. Sometimes in a day they would march seventy-five to ninety miles. They would destroy stores of supplies, wreck railroads, burn water stations, demolish trestles, attack and burn wagon trains. Their best living was to be obtained by victory and the popular application to the fortunes of war the maxim—“That they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can.”