In my June post regarding Gen. James Wilson and his postwar recollections, I briefly referred to the dismounted cavalrymen attached to the Army of the Potomac at the outset of the Overland Campaign. My specific focus in June had been the degree to which Spencer Carbines had been issued to the men, and I saved a closer look at the dismounted men for … today.

With a few exceptions, namely the disastrous Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid of late February and early March, the army’s winter encampment had been rather quiet. Enough so that one might assume that the army began the Overland Campaign on May 4 in superb condition. Gen. Rufus Ingalls, the army’s quartermaster, stated as much in his campaign report. “The army was essentially quiet and at rest until the commencement of the ‘grand campaign’ on the 4^th of May, 1864… Supplies of all kinds were issued in ample quantities…The cavalry and artillery arms were well supplied with horses. Probably no army on the earth ever before was in better condition in every respect than the Army of the Potomac on the 4^th of May 1864”

Though I had seen references to the contrary in the past, namely in the letters of Lt. Col. Ebenezer Gould, 5^th Michigan Cavalry, who led the dismounted contingent, I had paid little attention to them. As with the June post, I do not intend to denigrate Ingalls or his subordinate quartermasters. Despite many logistical challenges and numerous failures, I believe the Quartermaster Department succeeded much more than they failed, and I believe the Army of the Potomac did begin the campaign in superb condition. But the fact remains, the Cavalry Corps set out from Culpeper County with a significant number of dismounted men in the ranks. Might I be able to find a reasonable answer as to why?

War Department General Order 236 established the Cavalry Bureau on July 28, 1863. The order charged the bureau commander with organizing and equipping the cavalry forces of the army and directed that “the purchase of all horses for the cavalry service will be made by officers of the Quartermaster’s Department, under the direction of the chief of the Cavalry Bureau,” Gen. George Stoneman. A giant leap forward, the bureau, as well as the Cavalry Depot itself, never reached its full potential.

One of the first officers pulled from the Army of the Potomac and assigned to the Bureau was Lt. Col. Charles Sawtelle. He served as chief quartermaster for the Cavalry Corps from April 24, 1863, until transferred to the Cavalry Bureau as Chief Quartermaster on August 10, 1863. That very day, Sawtelle began ordering lumber, as well as carpenters, blacksmiths, etc., to construct the stables, corrals and other structures, and to fill the necessary positions at the depot. By September 5, Sawtelle had more than 1,200 men working at the facility and had already begun receiving horses from his suppliers. He remained at the bureau until December 27, 1863. Still, his name disappears from the Official Records following the Gettysburg Campaign and throughout his tenure at the bureau. Though we see no evidence in the published records today, Sawtelle’s work continued, often at a frantic pace. His unpublished communications, as well as other unpublished documents, suggest that October 30, 1863, may be where the story of the dismounted detachment begins.

As the Bristoe Campaign wound down at the end of October, the army entered a relatively quiet period before the brief Mine Run Campaign of late November. The recent campaigning had taken an especially heavy toll on the cavalry, as the mounted arm had carried the weight of the work. Picket duty continued, however, and small skirmishes flared up routinely, especially at river crossings. But the general tranquility allowed commanders either at army headquarters or Cavalry Corps headquarters to survey regimental commanders regarding their horses. On October 30, commanders reported the number of horses received in their regiments since April 30, the number of unserviceable horses turned in, the number of horses lost in action and the number abandoned. 

By way of an example, the 16^th Pennsylvania, of Col. John Irvin Gregg’s Brigade, reported 286 horses received since April 30, 236 horses turned in as unserviceable, 39 lost in action and 187 horses as abandoned. Colonel Gregg’s brigade received 2,342 horses during the same period, turned in 1,756 unserviceable horses, and counted 1,077 horses lost in action or abandoned. Expand these numbers across the entire Cavalry Corps and one gets a pretty accurate sense of the challenges facing the Quartermaster Department.

On the same day, Lt. Colonel Sawtelle, Chief Quartermaster at the Cavalry Bureau, sent at least seven telegrams across the country from New York to Pittsburgh, Chicago and St. Louis. All addressed the same general problem, “The demand for horses…is very urgent just now.” He counted 3,000 men awaiting horses at the new depot in Washington, even as he sent about 500 remounted men back to the army per day.

Possibly as a means of eliminating the number of men waiting in Washington, General Ingalls told Stoneman the same day, that the Cavalry Corps would no longer send men to the capital to await horses. Instead, those men would remain with the army for horses to be shipped to them, and General Pleasonton asked for 2,000 horses to shipped as soon as possible. In other words, about 5,000 men in the corps required horses.

General Stoneman presented a more complete picture of the problems in a letter also dated October 30. The Union armies in total included 223 cavalry regiments. The Army of the Potomac counted 36, and those regiments had received 35,000 horses during the six months in question. Seven thousand had been delivered in October alone, the most delivered in one month during the period in question. The army’s 36 regiments had lost 18,000 horses in action and had turned in another 17,000 as unserviceable during the previous six months. Stoneman warned that at the rate the Army of the Potomac went through horses, 435,000 would be needed per year.

Col. Pennock Huey, 8^th Pennsylvania, and Gen. Wesley Merritt, provide two more examples worth considering. On November 11, Huey detailed the condition of his regiment.

“There are 11 officers and about 200 enlisted men for duty, about 150 enlisted men being at the dismounted camp… having had their horses either entirely used up, in our last operations, or so far disabled as to be unfit to carry the men.  The regiment has marched over 200 miles during the last month (October) and the horses have besides that distance, done work on picket duty, patrols and the usual work which falls to the lot of cavalry horses.  During our operations in the vicinity of Culpeper and the Rapidan, forage could not at all times be supplied, but I have reason to believe that every possible measure was adopted to procure forage for the animals.

“In the different engagements in which the regiment has participated, our loss in killed, wounded and missing has been 2 commissioned officers and about 65 men, which has further reduced the number for duty.  There is no regimental farrier or veterinary surgeon and but one or two farriers belonging to the companies with the regiment and no horse medicines of any sort to treat sickness in horses.  A great number are now bad with a sort of hoof rot very prevalent at the present time and there has been no chance of attending to it as the regiment has been so continually moving about…”

Writing on December 26, after the Mine Run Campaign, Merritt, commanding the 1^st Division, offered his assessment of the problems impacting the horses of the Reserve Brigade.

“The cause of so many horses dying and becoming unserviceable was principally the quality of the horses when first issued to the regiments. As a rule, they were too young to endure the hardships of field service. Many of them were diseased and all much reduced in flesh. While in the depot in Washington, it was more than once reported that horses were issued to the Brigade one day, which had been condemned as unserviceable the day before by the Brigade Inspector.

“…As an indication of the character of horses that have been (up to a very short time since) issued to the command I will say that there is scarcely a case in which some two or three horses out of every 25 or 30 sent from Washington have not become disabled and left by the roadside before reaching their original destination.”

I believe these reports are indicative of the overall health of the horses going into the winter encampment. The Cavalry Bureau and Depot had provided horses by the thousands, but standards had been lowered, as is often the case, to meet rising demand. Combined with the many other factors mentioned, the effectiveness of the corps clearly suffered going into the winter. Constant picket and patrol duty as well as the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid gave the animals little opportunity to recover.

Initial surveys of the returning raiders determined the 1^st Division needed 500 horses, the 2^nd Division needed 1,379 and the 3^rd Division about 2,000. Nearly 4,000 horses and roughly as many sets of horse equipments, at the same time that every Union army in the field prepared for General Grant’s unified spring offensive and issued their own calls for horses and equipment.

I believe one final report, written just one month before the opening of the Overland Campaign, identifies the last piece of the puzzle. On April 8, Gen. David Gregg explained:

“Owing to the large [number] of enlisted men [returning] to this division since the close of …last year, by reason of recruits received and the return of men separated from the command from various causes, a very large number of men present are dismounted.

“…requisitions have been made for horses to mount the dismounted men, but horses as yet not having been received, I have delayed to [make] requisitions for horse equipments. A very large number will be required in case all the horses [requested] are furnished, but exactly how many cannot be stated owing to the prolonged absence of furloughed Veteran Organizations.

“The division being entirely [outside] the line of the main body of the army, the accumulation of large amounts of property such as horse equipments, in the respective regimental camps would not be advisable because of the insecurity of its protection…  Should horses be furnished the division, it would delay its preparation for active service to have to wait the arrival of equipments for which requisitions have not yet been made… I… request instructions concerning drawing horse equipments at this time.”         

Gregg posits two points for consideration, veteran furloughs and his decision not to order necessary horse equipments ahead of receiving the horses he needed.

The previous autumn, soldiers had been polled by regiment to see how many men would reenlist for the remainder of the war. If enough men agreed to reenlist, the regiment earned the right to go home on a 30-day furlough. Prior to heading home, cavalrymen turned in their horses, equipment and weapons, which were then redistributed throughout the corps. All of which made sense, if the furloughed men returned to the Cavalry Depot. The Bureau would then be responsible for tracking their return and ensuring that all necessary animals, equipment and weapons were on hand, as the depot had the room to store the items.

But recall the decision made in October to have horses and equipment sent to the army. Doing so left the responsibility for ordering and stockpiling animals and equipment with the army, or, in this case, Gregg. But Gregg did not wish to tie up his men with additional guard duty, so he delayed ordering the needed equipment. On April 8, with the campaign season approaching and regiments still returning from furloughs, he found himself critically short of horses and horse equipments.

The term horse equipments refers to most of the gear a trooper needs for his horse, such as saddles, bridles and saddlebags, and if the arsenals did not hold enough of the equipment in stock then orders had to be sent to the factory owners holding the contracts to either produce more or to forward more from their own stock. Just as modern retail outlets order seasonal holiday items months ahead of time and gamble that the items will arrive just in time, so too the army needed to pre-order what it would need once the campaign season began. The difference being that today, retailers time their orders and deliveries so they receive what they need in the nick of time, thus avoiding the cost of storing the items for weeks or months. With a less developed supply chain, however, Gregg, and presumably the entire corps, found himself in a bind – he had waited too long. There simply was not enough time to receive the animals and equipment needed prior to May 4.

As a partial solution, the army dismounted regiments in which the necessary number of men had not agreed to reenlist, such as the 4^th New York. Doing so provided a quick, though only partial solution, as their animals and equipment went to regiments returning from furlough. Once the campaign began, the dismounted men would follow along on foot, assuming other duties, such as guarding prisoners and wagon trains, and be remounted and equipped when possible. By June 3, the 357 men of the 4^th New York had been fully remounted and armed, with the exception of sabers.

The dismounted battalions had been formed by the end of April and for organizational reasons and ease of returning men to their commands when mounted, I believe each division initially maintained its own battalion of dismounted men. However, Lt. Col. Ebenezer Gould, 5^th Michigan, soon had overall command of the dismounted men for the Corps. Col. Luigi di Cesnola, 4^th New York, may have briefly commanded the battalion for the 1^st Division and Maj. Myron Beaumont, 1^st New Jersey, led the battalion for Gregg’s 2^nd Division. I do not know who led the men from the 3^rd Division, nor exactly how long the battalions remained. While additional information may be found in OR Volume 36, a brief synopsis of Gould’s tenure may also be instructive.

Lt. Col. Ebenezer Gould had received a bullet wound in his ankle at Hagerstown in July 1863 and the wound continued to trouble him when the Overland Campaign opened. By July 1864, his health had deteriorated significantly.  As he told his brother on July 7, “I think if I had not gone on the Kilpatrick raid I should now be in condition to do duty to the end of the campaign.” Still, his desire to stay with the army led General Custer to place him in command of the brigade’s dismounted battalion, a point he first mentions to his wife in a letter of April 28, when he counted 600 unarmed men in his new command. He had been told that his troopers would receive carbines or rifles and should be prepared to fight as skirmishers. But he soon complained that “most of them are poor men and there will be little chance to do much.” Indeed, malingerers would have quickly realized that safety and light duty could be found in the dismounted command, and they would have found ways to injure their horses in order to remain behind the lines.

In a letter of May 13, Gould told his wife that General Meade had placed him in command of all the dismounted men in the corps, more than 3,000 by his count. Gould had sent 1,000 men to guard prisoners on their way to Belle Plain and had also taken custody of cannon captured during the recent fighting. By June 3, he and his men were at New Castle Ferry, guarding the army’s wagon train. On June 19 and writing from City Point where Major Beaumont had his men encamped, he told her, that he had recently mounted 600 men, but 2,000 dismounted men remained. One week later, he explained, “My own command is being reduced by mounting the men.”

On June 27, General Sheridan reported receiving 200 horses per day and that “arrangements have been made to furnish everything necessary [to mount the dismounted men] without delay.” By July 7, Gould had returned to his regiment, as the remainder of his men had either been mounted or been sent back to the depot in Washington. By the end of the month, and with his health continuing to deteriorate, he had been sent to a hospital in Washington. He received a medical discharge in November 1864.

My thanks to Bob Moran for encouraging me to pursue the story and for providing information on the 4^th New York.

Sources:

Unpublished documents in the National Archives

The Amos Gould Papers, Central Michigan University

The Alexander Newberger Diary, Library of Congress

The Official Records

Edward Longacre, Lincoln’s Cavalryman, pp. 221-222.

Stephen Starr, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Vol. 2

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