"Bull Run to Appomattox"

"The Second Cavalry Regiment"

Between 1833 and 1846, Congress added three mounted regiments to the United States Army. The success of the First and Second United States Dragoons, along with the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen inspired the adoption of cavalry units. While the Dragoons could fight on foot or horseback and the Riflemen acted as mounted infantry, these new regiments would perform the more traditional roles of reconnaissance and lightning attacks. On March 3, 1855, the 2nd United States Cavalry was established. Included on the regimental rosters were such future luminaries as Lee, Stuart, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph Johnston, George Thomas, John Bell Hood, Edmund Kirby Smith, Earl Van Dorn, William Hardee, and John Sedgwick. 

The regiment soon became a crack outfit with some of the best horsemen and Soldiers in the mounted service. Each company rode mounts of one colour; a colourful sight during regimental dress parades. Company “A” rode grays; Company “B” and “E” rode sorrels; Company “C”, “D”, “F” and “I” had bays; Company “G” and “H” rode browns and Company “K” rode roans.

After their initial training at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis, the Second was posted to Texas. The companies patrolled from the Red River to the Rio Grande and into New Mexico and Indian Territories. For the next several years, the Second launched numerous expeditions against various American Indian tribes. In July 1857, John Bell Hood engaged a group of Lipans and Comanches near Devil’s River. Outnumbered, the future Confederate general inspired the men through his personal courage which helped turn the tide of the battle and forced the enemy to abandon the field. Earl Van Dorn, another officer who went on to wear the gray, also distinguished himself in engagements. Led by Van Dorn, four companies trapped and defeated a sizable force of Comanches on October 1 at the Battle of Rush Springs, and followed it up on May 13, 1859, with a similar victory at the Battle of Crooked Creek in Kansas. The 2nd and later 5th Cavalry fought in a total of thirteen Indian Campaigns.

As the United States dissolved into the Confederacy and Union in 1861, the regiment's second commanding officer 54-year-old Lieut. Colonel Robert E. Lee returned to the East and was offered the opportunity to take command of the Union Army, but he declined because of his wife’s illness. On 20 April 1861, Lee resigned from the US Army and accepted command of the Army of Virginia.

Arriving at their destination of Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, the 2nd Cavalry Regiment was rebuilt with new officers and recruits and, as was the 1st Cavalry Regiment, was assigned to the Union “Army of the Potomac” that was organized under General George McClellan. The regiment fought its first battle of the Civil War and it's last designated as the 2nd Cavalry Regiment, at the first Battle of Bull Run (1st Manassas) on 21 July 1861, at Bull Run a battalion was with the last organized troops who opposed the Confederates; it served as rear-guard to Centerville and bivouacked on the ground where it lay before the battle. By an act of Congress dated 3 August 1861 and a general order dated 10 August 1861, the 2nd United States Cavalry Regiment was redesignated as the 5th United States Cavalry Regiment.

"Life in the Fifth"

The cavalry received little encouragement in the early part of the war. It suffered from the well-known ignorance, in high places, of the fit management and proper use of the arm. The war was nearly half over when Mr. Lincoln asked General McClellan "what the horses did to fatigue anything," and about the same time the celebrated remark about "dead cavalrymen " was attributed to General Hooker, but never made. As a matter of fact, the Fifth Cavalry performed some of its best services in those days, when the arm was outnumbered and overworked. The brilliant dash at Fairfax, the capture of two companies of unbroken infantry by Harrison's Company at Hanover Court House, Custer at New Bridge, and McIntosh at Sycamore Church, afforded a few of the examples of successful use of efficient cavalry in those early days. With battle records far exceeding that of the infantry, it was not called upon to suffer the terrible losses of foot troops in single engagements. The opportunities for mounted action were few. When dismounted, it was not its duty to fight desperately in attack or defense.

But while the infantry had its season of rest the cavalry was constantly exposed and suffered a large percentage of loss in almost daily fighting and scouting. Many were captured as a matter of course, from the isolated nature of its duties, but capture meant neither defeat nor dishonor; it generally showed that the trooper had ventured and risked too much.

A regular regiment, during the war, was under many disadvantages. Its field officers, and many others, were commanding volunteers and serving on important duty elsewhere. The Fifth Cavalry, with the exception of a few months, was commanded by captains and lieutenants. The command of the regiment changed thirty-four times, and, curiously enough, it frequently served under men who had been in its ranks not very long before. It was often difficult to get one officer to a squadron. Casualties among general officers and those on detached service were slight, so that promotion was comparatively slow. In the matter of recruits, like the States, and many of the towns and counties offered large bounties, the volunteer regiments were more easily kept up to their standard. There were ladies aid societies, congressmen, and newspapers, always watching the home organizations, mindful of their comfort, caring for their wounded, and praising their deeds. The regulars were deprived of these advantages.

There was many a tough tussle of outposts and advance and rear guards, where the cost was not counted and the road unexplored. As Private Mulvaney would have stated in the case, the word was "hit first and frequent." The roster was greatly changed by the war. In place of the fire-eating Southerners and hard-riding Northerners of a few years before, we find that all the junior officers were now promotions from the ranks, the best of the sergeants and privates who had learned their trade so well in the good school of the border war. There were English, Irish, Germans, and Americans among them, and they were a brave, stiff-backed set, who got all the law and the prophets out of the blue book and the tactics. They kept up much of the old style and rigidity of discipline and formed an excellent model for the volunteer cavalry.