American Civil War
In April 1861, the American Civil War broke out and 13 officers left the Regiment to join the cause of the Confederacy, including future generals Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, William W. Loring, Dabney H. Maury, William H. Jackson, George B. Crittenden, and John G. Walker. Not a single enlisted man left the regiment.
On 3 August 1861, all mounted regiments of the U.S. Army were classified as "cavalry", and the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen was re-numbered the 3d U.S. Cavalry Regiment, headquartered at Fort Thomas, third in precedence in the Regular Army. At the outbreak of the war, a Confederate force of about 3000 Texans began a campaign at Fort Bliss, Texas to seize the territories of New Mexico and Colorado. The 3d U.S. Cavalry Regiment was one of the few Regular Army units in the region available to oppose them. On 25 July detachments of Companies B and F were involved in a hard fight at Mesilla and joined Company I when it surrendered with Fort Fillmore on 26 July.
The regiment remained in New Mexico fighting hostile Indians as well as Confederate Troops until 1862. In September 1862, the regiment re-deployed to Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. In December it relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, where it spent 1863 performing duties for XV Corps, Army of the Tennessee. Between October and December 1863, the 3d Cavalry participated in operations on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad and fought in skirmishes at various locations such as Barton Station, Cane Creek, and Dickinson‘s Station, Alabama. The 3d Cavalry was tasked by General Sherman to perform various reconnaissance missions as part of his advance guard, including marching to the relief of Knoxville, Tennessee. Elements of the Regiment also were engaged at Murphy, North Carolina and Loudon, Tennessee. In 1864 the regiment relocated to Little Rock, Arkansas, where it remained for the remainder of the war fighting guerrilla forces, and after the war ended, on occupation duty until April 1866, when it was ordered back to New Mexico.
The 3d U.S. Cavalry Regiment‘s losses during the Civil War were two officers and thirty enlisted men who were either killed in action or died of wounds and three officers and 105 enlisted men who died of disease or other non-combat causes.
Read more about this topic: 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (United States)
Famous quotes containing the words american, civil and/or war:
“Success is somebody else’s failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)
“This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ... and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Signal smokes, war drums, feathered bonnets against the western sky. New messiahs, young leaders are ready to hurl the finest light cavalry in the world against Fort Stark. In the Kiowa village, the beat of drums echoes in the pulsebeat of the young braves. Fighters under a common banner, old quarrels forgotten, Comanche rides with Arapaho, Apache with Cheyenne. All chant of war. War to drive the white man forever from the red man’s hunting ground.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)