Cavalry.
The number of horses killed in battle was, after all, but a small fraction of those destroyed by exhaustion, starvation, and disease during the
Civil War. When
Lee's army marched into
Pennsylvania he had issued stringent orders against plundering.
The orders were almost implicitly obeyed except when it came to the question of horses.
The quartermasters, especially of artillery battalions, could seldom report their commands completely equipped.
The Confederacy had no great cavalry depots like Giesboro, or those at
St. Louis or
Greenville in
Louisiana.
When a mount was exhausted he had to be replaced.
Some of the farmers actually concealed their horses in their own houses, but a horseless trooper was a veritable sleuth in running down a horse, whether concealed in the parlor or in the attic.
The Confederates offered to pay for the horses, but in Confederate currency.
The owners occasionally accepted it on the principle that it was “better than nothing.”
The animals thus impressed in
Pennsylvania were for the most part great, clumsy, flabby Percherons and Conestogas, which required more than twice the feed of the compact, hard-muscled little
Virginia horses.
It was pitiable to see these great brutes suffer when they were compelled to dash off at full gallop with a field-piece after pasturing on dry broom-sedge and eating a quarter of a feed of weevil-infested corn.
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Horses killed in battle: a serious loss |
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A cavalry horse picketed at the evening bivouac |
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