Stephen Brennan - Bugles, Boots, and Saddles: Exploits of the U.S. Cavalry

Copyright 2017 by Stephen Brennan

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Frederic Remington

Cover painting: On the Southern Plains by Frederic Remington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-0448-0

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0449-7

Printed in United States of America

Boots and Saddles : The bugle call for cavalry troops to mount and to take their place in the line.

Contents

Introduction

In his time, many people considered George Washington to be the best horseman in the colonies. Its odd, then, that in the first days of our Revolutionary War, it looked as though he was determined to dispense with the use of mounted troops altogether. When, in the early summer of 1776, Washington moved his rabble of an army to New York City, he faced two primary tasks. Most immediately, he needed to defend the city from a British invasion that everyone knew was coming, and perhaps more importantly, he needed to organize, supply, discipline, and deploy an army that would be capable of taking the field against King Georges troops, which were considered to be the best in the world.

Building an army had not been easy and by midsummer it was still very much a work in progress. The various regional militias and other largely ad hoc forces under Washingtons command were mostly insubordinate, mistrustful of one another, jealous each of their particular prerogatives, and uncertain in a fight. But Washington soon understood that if this ragtag force was to be the means by which the colonists secured their independence, he would have to rethink the whole concept of what it meant to be a military commander. To this end, the general swallowed his pride and instead of simply issuing orders, he adopted a policy of at once flattering and cajolingand only occasionally bullyinghis recalcitrant troops.

By early July, Washington had begun to make some progress along these lines when a large company of mounted troopsfive hundred or soarrived at his headquarters. They had come from Connecticut, and they had been raised and organized from among the patriot gentry. Most of them were well off, and many traveled with their own servants and were accompanied by a string of spare mounts. Their uniforms were gorgeous. At first, Washington was nonplussed. This was not, he felt, what he needed to defend New York. His army required arms, infantry, powder, and rations, not this horde of gentlemen cavaliers. More than that, their mere presence threatened to upset all his arrangements and stratagems, the careful balance between the egos and prejudices of his disparate force. Therefore, his first gambit was to declare that unfortunately he had no forage for the horses and no funds with which to procure any. No worries, replied the cavaliers, who explained that they were men of property who would buy the forage themselves. But when the General further informed them that he required them to serve as dismounted troops, to join the line and help dig fortifications, they took themselves back to Connecticut in some haste.

Washingtons own prior experience was in backwoods fighting, where the mounted warrior had little role to play. The real difficulty was that heas well as most of the other American commandershad scant insight regarding the war-making potential of mounted troops, much less any idea of the value of an arm of the service specifically organized for the purposes of shock-attack and pursuit, reconnaissance and exploration, screening an advance or a retreat, and harassing an enemy himself in retreat. Eventually, Washington and his officers grew to understand something of their value, and over the next one hundred years, the U.S. Cavalry adapted itself to the needs and imperatives of the growing nation, often covering itself in glory and only occasionally miring itself in shame.

As the whole history of the U.S. Cavalry is too immense a subject for any one volume, this book is composed largely of accounts and memoirs of officers and men who served in the various actions and theaters of conflict. The aim is toward an impressionistic effect, each exploit giving color and contrast to the whole.

Besides the virtue of being primary source history, each exploit illustrates unique aspects of U.S. Cavalry life and tactics in the nineteenth century.

Stephen Brennan

Cornwall, CT

2016

Classic U.S. Cavalry Arms, Tactics, and Practices

This first section of the book is here offered as an introduction to the whole world of the U.S. Cavalry trooper in the nineteenth century. Materials are freely edited and adapted from Cavalry Tactics as Illustrated by the War of the Rebellion, by Alonzo Gray; History of the United States Cavalry, by Albert G. Bracket; and Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, by George F. Price.

Arms

American Revolutionary War dragoons were armed with saber and horse pistols. The mounted riflemen fought dismounted and were armed with long rifles and knives or hatchets.

During the Mexican War, the dragoons were armed with musketoons, which were carried on sling belts. They also carried dragoon sabers of Prussian pattern and horse pistols.

The Mounted Rifles were armed with percussion rifles and Colt army revolvers but no sabers.

Civil War cavalry regiments were armed with sabers, rifle-carbines and Colt navy revolvers.

During the Civil War, the U.S. Cavalry was generally armed with short breech-loading rifles or carbines, sabers, and revolvers. The short rifles carried at the commencement of the Civil War were later replaced by carbines, and the single-loading carbines were, in the later part of the war, replaced by repeating ones.

At the beginning of the Civil War, the sabers were of the Prussian pattern, with a long, straight blade. These were soon replaced by the light cavalry saber with a curved blade, which was much more highly regarded than the Prussian saber.

The Colt revolver was generally carried. It was loaded with powder and ball, and fired with a percussion cap.

The year 1861 saw the raising of the Sixth Pennsylvania, the only regiment of lancers ever fielded by the U.S. Cavalry, but this regiment exchanged the lance for the saber in April 1863. Although American troops had faced British lancers in the Revolutionary War and in the War of 1812, and very skillful lancers in the Mexican War, this method of fighting never really caught on in the U.S. From time to time, there were experiments with its use but nothing much came of them. This was largely because the lance could not be used to good advantage in the close, wooded country found everywhere along the Atlantic coast and in the eastern states generally. By the time of the Indian Wars following the Civil Warfought mostly in the open country of the Great Plains and the deserts of the Southwestadvances in the firepower of the carbine and the revolver obviated any need for the mounted lancer.