Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman / With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War

by James Harvey Kidd

"You have sabers."

"Yes, and by —— they are loaded," he retorted, as he brought his men front into line on the right.

Captain Brittain survived the war and came to Michigan to live. He often has sent me kindly reminders of his remembrance of the circumstances as narrated above. For many years he had a home in Wexford county, and I last heard of him as prospering on the Pacific coast.

At that moment, the thing had a critical look. We were inside a horseshoe of infantry, the extremities of which very nearly reached the river. We had to go through that line, or through the river, or surrender. Breckinridge's line was in plain sight, not a half mile away, in the open and moving up in splendid order. So far as I am informed, Custer was the only man in the command who knew that there was a ford and that we were making for it. The rest were screwing their courage up to the task of breaking through. I never have ceased to admire the nerve exhibited by Captain Brittain, when I told him it looked as if that was what we would have to do. He was an excellent officer and belonged to an excellent regiment.

"My sabers are loaded."

The greatest coolness was displayed by General Custer and his entire command. There was not a hint of weakness or fear in any quarter. The brigade, at each falling back, ployed from line into column and deployed into line again, as if on parade, with Breckinridge and his corps for the spectators. Every movement was at a walk. There was no haste—no confusion. Every officer was on his mettle and every man a hero.

Presently, Custer finally withdrew his battery, then the regiments one at a time, and slipped away into Maryland before the enemy realized what he was doing.

The delicate duty of bringing up the rear was entrusted to Colonel Alger with his own regiment and the Sixth. I was ordered to report to him. The battery crossed first, then the First and Seventh, the brigade staff and general commanding.

The two regiments stood in line, watching the enemy closing in closer and closer until this was accomplished. Then Colonel Alger told me to go. He followed leisurely and, as the Fifth and Sixth were marching up the Maryland bank, a line of confederates came up on the other side, and so astounded were they to see how we had escaped from their grasp, that some of them actually cheered, so I have been informed. They had been deceived by the audacity of Custer and his men in the first place and by the cleverness with which they eluded capture in the second.

The battle of Shepherdstown was the last in which Colonel Alger was engaged. While the brigade was lying in camp on the Maryland side awaiting orders, he was taken sick and was sent to hospital by order of the brigade surgeon. He was assigned to special duty by order of President Lincoln and did not rejoin. The esteem in which he was held by General Custer and the confidence which that officer reposed in him to the last moment of his service in the brigade is amply evidenced by the selection of him to lead the attack on Kershaw at Front Royal and to bring up the rear at Shepherdstown. The coolness and ability of the officers and the intrepidity of the men in the Michigan cavalry brigade were never more thoroughly tested than in those two battles. Custer was the hero of both and Alger was his right arm. At Meadow Bridge, at Yellow Tavern and in all the battles of that eventful campaign, wherever they were associated together, wherever the one wanted a man tried, true, trained and trustworthy, there he would put the other. No misunderstandings that arose later can alter the significance or break the force of these cold facts.