The Confederate cavalry.
--Unless a different system from that now in operation be adopted, this most useful, indeed indispensable, arm of the service seems in a fair way to be broken up entirely.
At present each man furnishes his own horse, and is allowed forty cents a day for keeping him. Forty cents a day make one hundred and forty-six dollars a year — that is to say, about one-fifth part of the sum which it costs to obtain a good, serviceable (not a fine) horse.
The cavalry service is very hard upon the horses.
Forage is frequently scarce, and the horses very often compelled to put up with the scantiest possible fare.
Moreover, they are required to be constantly in motion, often after a shoe, or it may be two, has been lost.
Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that the destruction of horse flesh is enormous, and troopers often dismounted, and compelled probably for days to follow the wagon trains, rendering no service in their proper sphere.
The Government pays for no horses but such as are killed in battle.
When the trooper loses his horse he is compelled to buy another out of his own purse, and as not many of them are rich, it goes peculiarly hard with them.
Few of them are able to stand a repetition of the process, now that the most ordinary horse sells for five or six hundred dollars.
Government ought to furnish horses to the cavalry, as they furnish swords and pistols.
The idea is that the trooper will take better care of the horse if it belong to him than he would if it belonged to the
Government.
There may be something in this notion, but the evils of the present system are so enormous as greatly to counterbalance this single good.
It is, moreover, the duty of the officers to see that the horses are properly taken care of, and no officer is fit to command who does not attend to this duty with the utmost particularity.
In every other service, we believe, Government owns the horses, and the men are made to take proper care of them, being liable to severe punishment for failure to do so. Why cannot our cavalry be placed on the same footing with that of other services?
We hope Congress will take up this question and apply the proper remedy.
Otherwise, we see not how it is possible to prevent the dismounting of large bodies of mounted troops.
