AS far as I am aware, no great commander ever possessed so valuable a charger as “Cincinnati,” General Grant’s favorite during the fourth year of the Civil War, and after his great victory at Chattanooga, during which he rode “Egypt,” another of his six war-horses. A few weeks later, when in Cincinnati, Grant received the gift of the noble steed, which he named after that city. He was a son of “Lexington,” with a single exception the fastest four-mile thoroughbred that ever ran on an American race-course, having made the distance in 7:19¾ minutes. The general was offered $10,000 for the horse, as his record almost equaled that of his sire and his half-brother “Kentucky.” He was a spirited and superb dark bay of great endurance, Grant riding him almost daily during the Wilderness campaign of the summer of 1864, and until the war closed in the following spring. “Cincinnati” was seventeen hands, and, in the estimation of the illustrious soldier, the grandest horse that he had ever seen, perhaps the most valuable ever ridden by an army commander from the time of Alexander down to our own day.
The general very rarely permitted any person but himself to mount him. Only two exceptions are recalled by the writer, once when Admiral Daniel Ammen, who saved Grant when a small boy from being drowned, visited him at his headquarters at City Point on the James River, and when, a little later, President Lincoln came to the same place from Washington to spend a week with the general. On the admiral’s return from a two-hours’ ride, accompanied by a young aide-de-camp, Grant asked how he liked “Cincinnati.”
Ammen answered, “I have never backed his equal.”
“Nor have I,” said the general.
In his “Personal Memoirs” Grant writes:
Lincoln spent the last days of his life with me. He came to City Point in the last month of the war, and was with me all the time. He lived on a despatch-boat in the river, but was always around headquarters. He was a fine horseman, and rode my horse “Cincinnati” every day. He visited the different camps, and I did all that I could to interest him. The President was exceedingly anxious about the war closing, and was apprehensive that we could not stand another campaign.
Soon after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee and his army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in April, 1865, “Cincinnati” was retired from active service, thereafter enjoying almost a decade of peace and comfort on Admiral Ammen’s Maryland estate near Washington until the end came in September, 1874, and he then received honorable burial. The charger is fully entitled to a prominent place among the most celebrated chargers of the nineteenth century, which includes General Lee’s “Traveller,” General Sherman’s “Lexington,” and General Sheridan’s “Winchester,” which died in 1878, and was skilfully mounted by a taxidermist. “Winchester” is included among the relics of the Mexican and later wars in the interesting collection of the Military Service Institution on Governor’s Island, New York Harbor.
It is interesting to record that Washington, who was six feet and two inches in stature, weighed at the time of the siege of Yorktown 195 pounds; Wellington, five feet seven inches, weighed at Waterloo 140 pounds; Napoleon, five feet six inches, at the same date, 158 pounds; and Grant, five feet eight inches, weighed at Appomattox Court House 145 pounds; General Lee at Gettysburg weighed 180 pounds; Sherman at Atlanta 165 pounds; and Sheridan, in the battle of Cedar Creek, about 150 pounds. Washington was the tallest, and Sheridan the shortest of the seven generals whose war-horses are described in this article. It will be seen, therefore, that Washington’s war-horse “Nelson” had a much heavier weight to carry than the chargers “Copenhagen,” “Marengo,” and “Cincinnati,” in their masters’ concluding campaigns.