Cavalry Corps, Army of The Potomac
After the disastrous Fredericksburg Campaign, Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker took command of the Army of the Potomac. One of Hooker's positive contributions was in creating a unified cavalry command in April 1863. Other than at Antietam, where the cavalry had been combined into a single division for a planned (but unengaged) attack on Lee's center, the Union cavalry had not been unified to date. Hooker organized three previously unrelated divisions into a single corps of cavalry, placing it under the unified command of George Stoneman. Hooker also began outfitting them with Sharps and Smith breechloading rifles, and, in a couple cases, with Spencer repeating rifles, giving them an advantage in firepower over the Confederates.
Read more about this topic: Cavalry Corps (Union Army)
Famous quotes containing the words cavalry, army and/or potomac:
“To fight aloud is very brave,
But gallanter I know,
Who charge within the bosom
The Cavalry of Woe.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“I was interested to see how a pioneer lived on this side of the country. His life is in some respects more adventurous than that of his brother in the West; for he contends with winter as well as the wilderness, and there is a greater interval of time at least between him and the army which is to follow. Here immigration is a tide which may ebb when it has swept away the pines; there it is not a tide, but an inundation, and roads and other improvements come steadily rushing after.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“While I am in favor of the Government promptly enforcing the laws for the present, defending the forts and collecting the revenue, I am not in favor of a war policy with a view to the conquest of any of the slave States; except such as are needed to give us a good boundary. If Maryland attempts to go off, suppress her in order to save the Potomac and the District of Columbia. Cut a piece off of western Virginia and keep Missouri and all the Territories.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)