Review - "Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America" by Earl Hess

[Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America by Earl J. Hess (Louisiana State University Press, 2025). Hardcover, photos, illustrations, diagrams, tables. Pages main/total:ix,357/440. ISBN:978-0-8071-8444-8. $49.95]

With the publication of Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America, military historian Earl Hess has now completed a trilogy of works that comprehensively examine the recruitment, organization, training, arming, support, and administration of all three principal combat arms of the Union and Confederate armies. With cavalry's use on the Civil War stage being the most versatile of the trio, Hess's study also broadly delves into the branch's significant impact on the strategic planning, operations, and battlefield tactics of both sides.

As was the case with Civil War Infantry Tactics (2015) and Civil War Field Artillery (2022), Hess begins Civil War Cavalry with a background summary of cavalry's place in the American military experience beginning with the Colonial period. Hess notes that, while both infantry and artillery were deployed in a manner and scale at least somewhat comparable to their European power forebears (and with accompanying doctrinal development), American cavalry, which typically operated in dribs and drabs, was the odd man out.

Hess goes on from there to summarize Civil War cavalry recruitment, organization, and training. In a fashion similar to corresponding sections of his infantry and artillery books, Civil War cavalry's tactical formations and maneuvers are illustrated through contemporary diagrams and explained through fairly detailed descriptions and numerous battlefield examples. That cavalry units and formations were typically deployed in mixed fashion, line and column, is an important part of the discussion. Lines, both mounted and dismounted, were commonly supported by columns of mounted troops to flank and rear, those columns used to quickly counter enemy thrusts, support faltering front lines, and exploit offensive opportunities. One interesting internal debate during the Civil War surrounded the deployment of cavalry lines in single or double rank. Both had their proponents, and, while the former generally won out, the conflict over rank structure was never entirely resolved.

The theme of cavalry being the most versatile of the three combat arms is represented through the myriad of tasks and operations that were assigned to it. These are all described in the book, and include providing couriers for infantry leaders, outpost duties, establishing picket lines, skirmishing, intelligence gathering, screening front and flank, direct combined arms cooperation, raiding, and covering retreats. Another major element of that versatility was the capability of maneuvering and fighting adeptly in both mounted and dismounted fashion, that being a general quality of Civil War cavalry and not a specialized unit-type focus. Of course, the unique defining feature of cavalry on the battlefield was the mounted charge, and Hess outlines the mechanics (and uniquely gruesome aspects) of that brand of face-to-face Civil War combat. Irregular mounted warfare is not given much attention in the book, if at all.

Raiding was a salient part of cavalry's contributions to Civil War military operations, providing a number of its most dramatic moments. However, Hess, though he offers case studies of both successful and unsuccessful raids, joins many critics in holding a generally dim view of the practice's overall effectiveness, explaining that the vast majority of raids had little effect beyond the "local, regional, or tactical level" (pg. 184), with not enough gains to justify often crippling losses in horseflesh that took a long time (many months) to recover. Readers can count the author among those who believe that Civil War cavalry would have, in most cases, been far more usefully deployed in close cooperation with the field armies. However, Hess also raises a good point that the American military had so little institutional experience in the sphere of direct infantry-cavalry cooperation that widespread neglect and missed opportunity in that area is understandable. In the face of that, the allure of the raid was powerful.

Hess also surveys the range of personal weaponry wielded by Civil War cavalrymen. At the risk of overgeneralization, he determines that, for a variety of reasons, Confederate cavalrymen emphasized the pistol in close combat and Union cavalrymen the saber. To some degree, procurement factors were at play (with good sabers always being in very low supply for the Confederate Army) in creating that disparity, but frequent readers of Civil War cavalry battles might also recognize a narrowing in that gap the further east one progresses. In terms of assessing the impact of support weapons, Hess does not believe that horse artillery had much impact on the course and outcome of mounted engagements, suggesting that the guns, even though they were more maneuverable than normal field artillery, could not keep pace with the swirling, up-tempo nature of the cavalry versus cavalry battlefield.

In addition to conveying a strong reminder of the enormous financial expense and logistical backing required to raise, equip, and maintain large mounted forces, Hess's study emphasizes the war's vast rate of horse wastage, which was far greater than that of European army contemporaries. Both sides wrestled with managing it, and Union and Confederate authorities alike are properly chastised in the book for badly overlooking specialized veterinary care. As expected, the author joins every other historian in criticizing the Confederate Army's shortsighted policy of having cavalrymen supply their own mounts and remounts. Interestingly, Hess explains that the Union Army had a similar self-supply program that extended well into the conflict, but it operated in parallel with the government supply and rehabilitation system that quickly proved superior. In his discussion of mounts and their welfare, Hess also directs exceptional attention toward the sentient lives of cavalry horses. Explorations of the emotional bonds forged being horse and rider are common enough in the literature, but the author also raises awareness of the ways in which horses both complied with and pushed back against the rigorous and dangerous demands of the service.

Hess believes that the traditional view that skilled horsemanship was more widespread among southern recruits probably has some merit, but he critically argues that the impact of individual riding skill was minimal within the conventional cavalry service's regimented system of training and battlefield deployment. In his view, the 4+ months of training obtained from competent officers and drillmasters produced troopers well able to perform the tasks that cavalry service demanded of them, individual horsemanship being only of marginal additional benefit in those circumstances. One suspects that individual horsemanship played a much more significant part in irregular mounted warfare, especially among dispersed groups of guerrilla-style fighters.

In comparing the overall effectiveness of Union and Confederate cavalry, Hess is justly hesitant when it comes to elevating any single factor over the great many that are identified and assessed in the text. Nevertheless, his study does form a persuasive argument that "management and administration were the keys" (pg. 333) when it came to explaining the divergent paths of effectiveness taken by Union and Confederate cavalry formations overall as the war progressed. One can be tempted to attribute contrasting arcs of Union ascendancy and Confederate decline primarily to resource differences that widened sharply from the war's midpoint onward, but Hess strongly maintains that leadership and management factors were just as, and arguably even more, significant.

Throughout the war, both sides grappled with how to use infantry, artillery, and cavalry together to best effect. As Hess explains, infantry and artillery developed robust combined arms capability, but fully integrating cavalry, which was far more mobile than either of those, was a constant battle. Hess reduces that struggle to a "dispersion versus concentration" debate that Union forces were much more successful at resolving as the war progressed. It was not a matter of one way being entirely better than the other but, as the author maintains, which side was capable of striking the best balance. In Hess's view, that was clearly the Union side. With its vastly inferior degree of support infrastructure, field logistics, and remount capabilities, Confederate ability to maintain and utilize large concentrations of cavalry effectively waned as the war progressed while that of their foes expanded. Hess sees generals Philip Sheridan in the eastern theater (1864-65) and James Wilson in the western theater (1865) as being the clear standout leadership forces behind the late-war apogee of Civil War cavalry effectiveness through concentration.

With U.S. Army cavalry deployment never again approaching the scale of those large forces that operated during the Civil War, the arm's North American legacy was limited. Hess finds that professional military observers from the European powers collectively condemned the excessive wastage of horses that was prevalent in the American conflict, but there was some appreciation for effective development of dismounted fighting and common interest in strategic raiding. Accompanying that superficial enamorment with deep raids, though, came a belief that such operations had little place in their own European conflicts. One wishes that Hess could have explained what was primarily behind that calculation. Perhaps it was felt that western and central Europe's conflict environment, which was far more populous, urbanized, and developed than North America's, could not offer the scale of open space that Civil War deep raiders thrived upon, especially in the western theater.

As a comprehensive portrait of Civil War cavalry, from origins to postwar legacy, Earl Hess's Civil War Cavalry: Waging Mounted Warfare in Nineteenth-Century America is an impressive study full of descriptive detail, nuance, reasoned challenges to traditional views, and interesting arguments. Highly recommended.