Types of Mounted Forces
There were four types of mounted forces prevalent in the Civil War.
- Cavalry were forces that fought principally on horseback, armed with carbines, pistols, and especially sabers. Only a small percentage of Civil War forces met this definition—primarily Union mounted forces in the Eastern Theater during the first half of the war. Confederate forces in the East generally carried neither carbines nor sabers. A few Confederate regiments in the Western Theater carried shotguns, especially early in the war.
- Mounted infantry were forces that moved on horseback but dismounted for fighting on foot, armed principally with rifles. In the second half of the war, most of the units considered to be cavalry actually fought battles using the tactics of mounted infantry. An example of this was the celebrated "Lightning Brigade" of Col. John T. Wilder, which used horses to quickly arrive at a battlefield such as Chickamauga, but they deployed and fought using standard infantry formations and tactics. By contrast, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Federal cavalry under John Buford also dismounted to fight Confederate infantry, but they used conventional cavalry tactics, arms, and formations.
- Dragoons were hybrid forces that were armed as cavalrymen but were expected to fight on foot as well. The term comes from the French Army, representing a cross between light cavalry and infantry. The fighting tactics of the forces deployed by Union General Philip Sheridan in 1864, and by Confederate General Wade Hampton after the Battle of Yellow Tavern, fit the dragoon model, although those units did not adopt the term.
- Irregular forces (partisan rangers or guerrillas) were generally mounted forces. There is little commonality as to their weapons—in general, any available were used. The Confederacy produced the most famous irregular leaders, including William Clarke Quantrill, John S. Mosby, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and John Hunt Morgan (although the latter two did employ traditional mounted infantry tactics in some campaigns).
Read more about this topic: Cavalry In The American Civil War
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