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Comments on the First volume of Count of Paris' civil War in America.
[The following paper needs no editorial introduction, as everything from the pen of this able military critic attracts attention, is read with interest, and is noted as of high historic value.
We trust that it will be followed by papers from the same able pen on the succeeding volumes of the
Count of
Paris' history.]
History of the civil War in America. By the
Comte de Paris.
Translated, with the approval of the author, by
Louis F. Tasistro.
Edited by
Henry Coppee, Ll. D. Volume I. Philadelphia:
Joseph H. Coates & Co. 1875.
In reviewing the history of the regular army of the United States, the author, on page 24, volume I, makes the following statement:
The cavalry, which was disbanded after the war of 1812, only dates, with the first regiment of dragoons, from the year 1832.
The second was created in 1836, the third in 1846, as also the mounted riflemen, which being formed solely to serve in the Mexican war, made the campaign on foot, notwithstanding their appellation of mounted riflemen.
In 1855 Congress passed a law authorizing the formation of two new regiments of cavalry, and Mr. Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War, took advantage of the fact that they had not been designated by the title of dragoons to treat them as a different arm, and to fill them with his creatures, to the exclusion of regular officers whom he disliked.
It was the third dragoons which was formed to serve only during the
Mexican war, and that regiment was disbanded at the close of that war. The “mounted rifles,” though formed about the same time, was formed as a permanent regiment, and was continued in the service, with that distinctive appellation, until August the 3d, 1861, when it was designated the “third cavalry.”
The three mounted regiments, therefore, in the service in 1855, when the first and second cavalry were formed, were the first and second dragoons and the mounted rifles.
By the act of Congress of August 3d, 1861, the first and second dragoons were designated respectively the first and second cavalry, the mounted rifles the third cavalry, and the first and second cavalry respectively the fourth and fifth cavalry.
The term “cavalry,” in common parlance, includes all mounted troops, but in military phrase “dragoons,” “mounted rifles” and “cavalry” originally constituted different arms of the service, because
