The Photographic History Of The Civil War Volume Iv The Cavalry PDF Download

Excerpt from The Photographic History of the Civil War, Vol. 4 of 10: The Cavalry The characteristic that stands dominant, however, throughout this volume shows that the soldiers in the cavalry branch were peculiarly responsible. Not only must they main tain a highly trained militant organization, ready to fight with equal efficiency either mounted or on foot, but to them fell the care of valuable, and frequently scarce, animals, the protection of the armies' supplies, the transmission of important messages, and dozens more special duties which must usually be performed on the cavalryman's own initiative. On such detached duty there was lacking the shoulder to shoulder comradeship that large masses of troops enjoy. Confronted by darkness, distance, and danger, the trooper must carry out his orders with few companions, or alone. The discussion of organization and equipment is most important to an understanding of the cavalryman as he actually worked. The Federal methods, described at length in this volume, naturally involved a larger system and a more elaborate growth than those of the South with its waning resources. In other respects, however, the Confederate organization differed from that of the Union. The feeling for locality in the South manifested itself at the beginning of the war through the formation of companies and regiments on a geo graphical basis, and the election of officers by the men of the companies themselves. Thus, in spite of the want of military arms and ordnance stores, and the later disastrous scarcity of horses, the Confederates hung together in a manner that recalls the English yeomen archers who fought so sturdily, county by county. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.