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Cavalry of the Civil War its evolution and influence
Theo. F. Rodenbough, Brigadier-General, United States Army (Retired)
It may surprise non-military readers to learn that the
United States, unprepared as it is for war, and unmilitary as are its people, has yet become a model for the most powerful armies of
Europe, at least in one respect.
The leading generals and teachers in the art and science of war now admit that our grand struggle of 1861-65 was rich in examples of the varied use of mounted troops in the field, which are worthy of imitation.
Lieutenant-General von Pelet-Narbonne, in a lecture before the
Royal United Service Institution of
Great Britain, emphatically maintains that “in any case one must remember that, from the days of
Napoleon until the present time, in no single campaign has cavalry exercised so vast an influence over the operations as they did in this war, wherein, of a truth, the personality of the leaders has been very striking; such men as, in the
South, the God-inspired
Stuart, and later the redoubtable
Fitzhugh Lee, and on the
Northern side,
Sheridan and
Pleasonton.”
For a long time after our Civil War, except as to its political or commercial bearing, that conflict attracted but little attention abroad.
A great German strategist was reported to have said that “the war between the States was largely an affair of armed mobs” --a report, by the way, unverified, but which doubtless had its effect upon military students.
In the meantime other wars came to pass in succession — Austro-Prussian (1866), Franco-
German (1870), Russo-Turkish (1877), and later the
Boer War and that between
Russia and
Japan.
