American and British cavalry at Cowperns, January 1781

The American Experience.

The legacy of the Revolutionary Wars (1775-1783) had left America with a small but well trained cavalry force with its own manual and school of horsemanship.[i] It gradually developed into a competent and professional arm of the service, seeing action in the early Indian Wars, and during the Mexican War (1846-1847). These experiences should be borne in mind when considering the way in which cavalry was employed during the Civil War, at first by the South, and later by the North.

Originally conforming to European cavalry traditions, the Americans soon realised that, owing to the vastness of the country and the diverse nature of the climate and terrain, it was impractical to continue to follow the style of cavalry tactics employed by European armies. Also, with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, it soon became apparent that to train masses of recruits in the art of using the lance and sabre, while manoeuvring in squadron and regimental close packed ranks, would not be viable. The American cavalry commanders also saw that, with the introduction of the breech-loading rifle, all of these tactics would prove to be an exercise in pure madness, a lesson that the armies of Europe would take many more years to learn.[ii]

Both the North and South had a ready-made supply of men who had been brought up in the ways and skills of country craft and horsemanship. Many had to rely on their own initiative for their livelihood, as well as having a good knowledge of how to use firearms. But it was in the Confederate States in particular that these talents were more noticeable having, in the main, a more rural economy, which tended their men to having more of an aptitude for country pursuits and field craft.[iii]

The American Civil War also saw the potential for using cavalry against an enemy’s railroad system, and both sides used their mounted troops to good effect in cutting and disrupting rail networks by dashing and daring raids.

General Nathan Bedford Forrest (Library of Congress)

At the end of 1862 General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate cavalry was to show just what could be achieved by using raids at a time when the superior manpower of the North was beginning to tell. In December, Union General Ulysses Simpson Grant was making his first move towards the city of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River with some 40,000 troops, while General William Tecumsech Sherman, with another 32,000 more Union soldiers moved by river against Chickasaw Bluffs, just to the North of the city. On 20^th December 1862 Forrest hit the railroad between the towns of Bolivar Tennessee and Columbus Kentucky with his 2,500 troopers, and at the same time Confederate General Earl Van Dorn with 3,500 cavalry wrecked Grant’s secondary base at Holly Springs Mississippi. Not content with what had been achieved by his first raid, Forrest now took his force even further afield cutting Grant’s only rail link to the North between Humbolt and Jackson Tennessee. He caused so much destruction to track, bridges and rolling stock far into Kentucky that Grant was forced to retire back to Holly Springs and abandon his campaign for want of supplies and communications.[iv] But the main factor of Forrest’s raids, which were to become even more frustrating to Sherman later in the war, was that he had managed to tie down thousands of Union troops in attempts to intercept him.

It was during Sherman’s 1864 campaign against Atlanta Georgia that Forrest really excelled himself as an independent and intuitive commander.

‘His mere presence with a few thousand cavalry to the south forced Sherman to leave 80,000 of his 180,000 men he had with him to guard his line of communication to his main supply base at Louisville which lengthened as he advanced to 340 miles. Sherman had insured himself against temporary delays caused by attacks on his advance depots or minor damage to the railway immediately behind his main army. But Forrest, back at Tupelo in Mississippi, was nicely placed for a destructive raid on the northernmost sector of his railway which would cut Sherman off from his main base and in the long run bring his campaign to a halt…He (Sherman) therefore detached a mixed force of a further 10,000 under General Sturgis to hunt Forrest out of Tupelo and drive him to the west, out of harm’s way. At that very moment Forrest had set out to do just what Sherman most feared; and Sturgis did at least bring him hurrying back to save his base and troops he had left there. Though outnumbered by more than three to one, Forrest brilliantly concealed his weakness by moving through thickly wooded country, caught Sturgis at Brice’s Cross Roads with his cavalry and infantry widely separated and inflicted on him a smashing defeat. As Sturgis fell back to Memphis, he left 2,500 men -a quarter of his army- dead or wounded on the field; and Forrest got back to Tupelo having suffered no more than 500 casualties’.[v]

Although not on the scale of Forrest’s raids, the Union did succeed in diverting Confederate attention away from Grants second advance on Vicksburg when, in April 1863, General Benjamin Henry Grierson took 1,700 Union cavalry on a raid south of the city. This raid proved most beneficial to Grant as his forces crossed the Mississippi, but caused panic in the South, ultimately resulting in their president, Jefferson Davis trying to hold on to Vicksburg at any cost, while also attempting to support Confederate General Braxton Bragg’s forces in Tennessee. The real value of the raid therefore was in distracting and demoralising both the Confederate government and its General commanding Vicksburg, John Clifford Pemberton, at the very moment that Grant was manoeuvring to lay siege to the city.[vi]

It was the American generals who turned to an entirely new technique in their use of cavalry. A large force of mounted troops soon became a component of a lightly equipped force of all arms capable of operating against an enemy’s flank or rear. Speed, surprise and secrecy were the necessary elements in these operations. Used as a covering force the cavalry could mask the movements of a corps or an army, and it could also be used to threaten so many points simultaneously that the enemy were left guessing as to their true intent.[vii]

Perhaps the best example of how combined arms could be used to best effect came in the last year of the Civil War. At the beginning of 1865 General Robert E. Lee was being forced to stretch his dwindling forces further to his right, in order to cover the city of Richmond in Virginia. General George Pickett, the ill-fated commander whose division was decimated at Gettysburg, was detached by Lee from his position around Petersburg and pushed out to cover the Confederate right flank at Five Forks. It was here that poor old Pickett clashed with the Union cavalry under General Phil Sheridan.

General Phil Sheridan (Library of Congress)

On the 31^st March 1865 Sheridan pushed out one of his cavalry divisions, commanded by General Thomas Casimer Devin, towards Five Forks. In torrential rain the Union troopers made steady progress, but Pickett had found a road that ran through thick woods towards Dinwidde Court House, which concealed his forces from the enemy, enabling them to manoeuvre around the Union left flank with the idea of cutting them off. In so doing Pickett managed to drive a wedge between Devin’s division and Sheridan’s other Federal cavalry.[viii]

Battle of Five Forks

Taking stock of the situation, Sheridan immediately organised his other divisions to meet Pickett’s threat, eventually causing the Confederates to pull back from Dinnwidde and form a defensive line less then a hundred meters from the Union position.[ix]

Meanwhile Grant, now in command of all Union forces, and present with the Army of the Potomac on Lee’s front, ordered Sheridan to assume command of all troops to be sent to operate with him, these included the Union V Corps under General Gouverneur Kemble Warren.

Warren’s behaviour during the battle is another story. It was Sheridan’s, ‘…masterly demonstration of the power of a mixed force of all arms when intelligently employed,’[x] that is the real object of study. As McElwee says, ‘ His dismounted cavalry went over to the offensive and pinned down Pickett’s main force, while the infantry prised open the gap which had opened between Lee’s main army and his detached wing. By the end of the day Pickett’s force had been rolled up and dispersed in wild disorder and Lee’s main position rendered untenable.’[xi]

Concerning Sheridan’s use of a mixed force at Five Forks, Major Henry Havelock a British commentator, had this to say, ‘Had it been any European Cavalry, unarmed with “repeaters”, and untrained to fight on foot, that was barring the way -any Cavalry whose only means of detention consisted in the absurd ineffectual fire of mounted skirmishers, or in repeated charges with lance and sabre- the Confederate game would have been simple and easy enough.’[xii]

Havelock himself had won the Victoria Cross at Cawnpore in India in 1858, and although he was not in America to view the Civil War at first hand, he nevertheless understood by his studies of that conflict that what the American cavalry leaders had achieved were in complete harmony with his own conclusions on how cavalry should be handled, ‘ His final and fanatically held view was that in territory open enough to allow room for manoeuvre and in face of the rising fire-power of modern infantry and artillery “sabre cavalry” were totally out of date. He preached his conclusion with a fervid intolerance which, though it did no damage to his military career, made them totally suspect to higher authority.’[xiii]

As well as Havelock, another exponent of change in cavalry tactics came from the writings of the Canadian born, Lieutenant-Colonel George T.Denison. After the American Civil War Denison interviewed a number of Confederate generals who were living in exile in Canada. From these talks he concluded that, although there was a need to retain some cavalry units in their traditional role, fire-power should now be the main factor in the training of the mounted arm of the service, utilising the horse only for greater mobility.[xiv] His theories may not have been taken very seriously by most European powers, but he did win the first prize, offered by the Russian Grand Duke Nicholas in 1874, for his essay on the history of cavalry.[xv]

Even with the glaringly obvious fact that, after Borodino, Waterloo and Balaclava, cavalry could not, on their own, be expected to break well-formed infantry squares or overrun entrenchments, the armies of Europe still persisted in the old fashioned methods of dividing their mounted troops into light and heavy units, each trained in the skills of either the sword or the lance, and although the pistol or carbine were issued to both categories, these were considered as secondary to the use of cold steel.

 
French Cuirassiers 1870
"Representation de la Guerre (1870)", Jean-Francois Lecallion

The Prussians soon learnt their lesson regarding the poor showing of their cavalry during the war with Austria in 1866, but even allowing for their greater preponderance over the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, they still managed, albeit on a spectacular scale, to loose over half a brigade of cavalry when General von Bredow was ordered to charge the French infantry and gun line at the battle of Mars-la-Tours (16^th August 1870). That the charge itself did indeed stabilize the situation for the Prussians is not in question, what it should have shown to all those who witnessed it, and to those who studied its effects thereafter, was that if all cavalry were now to be used as little more than suicide missiles, then some other means of utilising these expensive and well disciplined troops should now be seriously considered.

 

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