The beginnings of the regiment were in other ways worthy of its thoroughbred personnel. The very best horses were obtained, and the result was the only really excellent mount that the regiment has ever had. The average price was one hundred and fifty dollars, which would be more than equivalent to double that amount at this time. The purchase was made mostly in Kentucky, by officers designated by a regimental order, and after six years of the hardest kind of service most of these horses were left behind with deep sorrow when General Twiggs surrendered to the State of Texas.

There is not much of interest to recall in the way of arms and equipment. Several patterns of carbine were in use, with Colt’s revolvers and the inevitable sabre. The carbine was discarded in the early part of the war, but had to be resumed of course, and is now, with the revolver, replaced by a more efficient arm. The “beautiful white weapon” has remained unchanged, and history fails to record the size of its grave-yard, even in the hands of the cavaliers of the Fifth. Changes in equipment have not been radical, and not all of them have been approved by the best experience. For instance, what fate should pursue the snaffle-rein, to drive it out of use, while we keep the carbine-sling after thirty-five years?

There was the close fitting jacket, trimmed with yellow braid; the silken sash; the black hat, looped with an eagle at the side, with trailing plumes of ostrich feathers. Brass scales for the shoulder, to turn the sabre strokes of the enemy, were provided, but only used for full dress. There were no boots or gauntlets.

The first drills were conducted by Major Hardee, the author of the tactics of that day, and the early discipline soon felt the master hands of such men as Johnston, Lee and Thomas, assisted by as good a lot of soldiers as ever spurred steed in fight or foray. There were rollicking times too, and bouts where eager subs would have drained the brimming Council Cup of Rothenberg without a sigh. They tell of many a run after hounds or over the track, and of “Bumble” and “Eagle” and other famous racers, backed by the the [sic] light riders of the old regiment, who always carried its colors to the fore. And there was once a game in which a certain lieutenant waged a thousand dollars and did not hold a pair. He afterwards led the forlorn hope of an expiring cause, and the incident was cited in solemn council, to show that such a man would surely fight on the morrow.

A very poor ranch, such as you may run across now in some distant sagebrush Eden of the now frontier, built of stone or logs chinked with mud, with a clay floor and an earthen roof, formed a palatial residence. To such a home the ladies of the old army followed their lords, and counted themselves happy when it was no worse. In those early Texas days most of the time was passed under canvas, with a certainty of constant scouting and a change of station at least once a year. Articles which we regard as necessities, even ice and potatoes, were unheard of luxuries at many posts, and scurvy was a well-known word in hospital records. The houses of the few married men formed charming social resorts which helped to keep alive the graces and refinements of civilization. Many a jolly party met within the narrow quarters, and the Thanksgiving turkey was nonetheless enjoyed when the guests had to sit on the family beds in order to arrange themselves at table. General Johnston’s quarters at Fort Mason consisted of one small room for himself and family.

The early service was well calculated to test the metal of officers and men. In the preceding year General Scott had reported that, in Texas, Indian hostilites had been more destructive than at other points. Long before the regiment left, the hostiles had been driven far into the interior, and they had been harried in their own hunting grounds and villages. Called to patrol a frontier extending from the Red River in the north, to Fort McIntosh on the Rio Grande, it scouted far into New Mexico, fought in Indian Territory, and defeated Mexican or Indian marauders in old Mexico. Forty well contested engagements were fought with Lipan, Apache, Kiowa or Comanche Indians, and with Mexican guerillas. All who know how hard it is to catch an Indian on the war-path, will appreciate the hard riding, the winter cold, the summer thirst, the quarries trailed but never flushed, the wakeful nights, the heavy days, involved in that brief record. There was no disaster.

The most successful engagements were fought by an expedition to the Wichita Mountains in the winter of 1858-59, under Major Earl Van Dorn. In the two combats of this command over a hundred warriors were left dead on the field ; the villages and ponies were captured. Van Camp, already distinguished in several engagements, was killed at the head of his troop. Van Dorn, Kirby Smith and Fitzhugh Lee, were wounded; six enlisted men were killed, and twenty wounded. One of Van Dorn’s wounds was at first supposed to be mortal; he was shot at close range by an arrow which went entirely through his body.

On the first occasion four troops, after a forced march of ninety miles in thirty-six hours, came upon. Buffalo Hump’s Comanche camp, consisting of a hundred and twenty lodges, and between four and five hundred Indians. It was a little after daylight, and a complete surprise. The cavalry was formed in line of troops, in columns of twos, guide right, and so they dashed into the village, which lay among some rough ravines well filled with thick reeds and underbrush. The Indians rallied and fought desperately hand to hand. It was several hours before they were completely dislodged and then they fled, followed by the troops. On the second occasion, after much ineffectual scouting, a part of the same band was attacked again some months after, with like result. For these and other actions high praise was given. The pride of the Comanches was broken.

During the great Rebellion the regiment was engaged before the first defeat, and after the last triumph of the Federal forces. At Bull Run a battalion was with the last organized troops who opposed the Confederates; it served as rear-guard to Centerville and bivouacked on the ground where it lay before the battle. It helped to stop the last advance of Lee’s army, and it had killed and “wounded at Appomatox on April 9, 1 S65. There were one hundred and twenty-five battles and minor actions in which loss in killed, wounded and missing, was suffered by one or the other combatant.

The cavalry received little encouragement in the early part of the war. It suffered from the well-known ignorance, in high places, of the fit management and proper use of the arm. The war was nearly half over when Mr. Lincoln asked General McClellan “what the horses did to fatigue anything,” and about the same time the celebrated remark about “dead cavalrymen “ was attributed to General Hooker, but never made. As a matter of fact the Fifth Cavalry performed some of its best service in those days, when the arm was outnumbered and overworked. The brilliant dash at Fairfax, the capture of two companies of unbroken infantry by Harrison’s troop at Hanover Court House, Custer at New Bridge, McIntosh at Sycamore Church, afforded a few of the examples of successful use of efficient cavalry in those early days. With battle records far exceeding that of the infantry, it was not called upon to suffer the terrible losses of foot troops in single engagements. The opportunities for mounted action were few. When dismounted, it was not its duty to fight desperately in attack or defense. But while the infantry had its season of rest the cavalry was constantly exposed, and suffered a large percentage of loss in almost daily fighting and scouting. Many were captured as a matter of course, from the isolated nature of its duties, but capture meant neither defeat nor dishonor; it generally showed that the trooper had ventured and risked too much.

A regular regiment, during the war, was under many disadvantages. Its field-officers, and many others, were commanding volunteers and serving on important duty elsewhere. The Fifth Cavalry, with the exception of a few months, was commanded by captains and lieutenants. The command of the regiment changed thirty-four times, and, curiously enough, it frequently served under men who had been in its ranks not very long before. It was often difficult to get one officer to a squadron. Casualties among general officers and those on detached service were slight, so that promotion was comparatively slow. In the matter of recruits, as the States, and many of the towns and counties, offered large bounties, the volunteer regiments were more easily kept up to their standard. There were ladies’ aid societies, congressmen and newspapers, always watching the home organizations, mindful of their comfort, caring for their wounded, and praising their deeds. The regulars were deprived of these advantages.

There was many a tough tussle of outposts and advance and rear guards, where the cost was not counted and the road unexplored. As Private Mulvaney would have stated the case, the word was “hit first and frequent.” The roster was greatly changed by the war. In place of the fire-eating Southerners and hard-riding Northerners of a few years before, we find that all the junior officers were now promotions from the ranks, the best of the sergeants and privates who had learned their trade so well in the good school of border war. There were English, Irish, Germans and Americans among them, and they were a brave, stiff-backed set, who got all the law and the prophets out of the blue book and the tactics. They kept up much of the old style and rigidity of discipline and formed an excellent model for the volunteer cavalry.

At the battle of Gaines’ Mill on June 27, 1862, the regiment performed its most distinguished service. On that day, it will be remembered, the Confederate Army, reinforced by the corps of Stonewall Jackson from Northern Virginia, made four desperate attacks upon the Federal left under Fitz John Porter, who was occupying an open plateau, with temporary intrenchments, east of Powhite creek, his left protected by the marshes of the Chickahominy bottom. The sluggish creek flowed through deep banks, concealed by heavy timber; the high ground of the plateau was free of obstacles and suitable for cavalry over a strip varying from four hundred to one thousand yards in width ; and in the breaks of the plateau, in rear of the extreme left of our line, were massed the weak cavalry brigades of Philip St. George Cooke. In front of the cavalry, the batteries of the reserve artillery were stationed.

It was after seven o’clock in the afternoon, the sun had sunk below the horizon, the heavy smoke of battle was hanging thicker over the field, and the last attack of the enemy had been made and won. Only the cavalry and a part of the artillery remained on this part of the field. A brigade of Texans, broken by their long advance, under the lead of the hardest fighter in all the Southern armies, came running on with wild yells, and they were a hundred yards from the guns. it was then that the cavalry commander ordered Captain Charles J. Whiting, with his regiment, to the charge. No one had blundered; it was the supreme moment for cavalry, the opportunity that comes so seldom on the modern field of war, the test of discipline, hardihood, and nerve. Right well was the task performed. The two hundred and twenty troopers of the Fifth Cavalry struck Longstreet’s veterans square in the face. Whiting, his horse killed under him, fell stunned, at the feet of the Fourth Texas Infantry. Chambliss was torn almost to pieces with six wounds. Sweet was killed. Only one of the other officers was unwounded. In all, the loss in killed, wounded and missing, was fifty-eight, and twenty-four horses were known to, have been killed. Unsupported and almost without officers, the troopers were stopped by the woods of the creek bottom, returned, reformed, and were soon after opposed to the enemy in covering the retreat of the Federal Army. Two days later the same troops were engaged at Savage Station. The guns which were in condition to retire were saved. The facts of that charge speak for themselves. No action was ever more worthy a poet’s genius; no cavalry charge was ever ridden better or against more hopeless odds of numbers. In other lands every survivor of Balaklava has been pensioned and decorated. The German nation will always delight over the record of its cavalry at Vionville and Mars-la-Tour, and the great Chancellor was never so proud as when he embraced the sons who rode in the ranks on that day. The memory of the sacrifice of French cavalry at Sédan is still a balm for many wounds. But while Cardigan, Brédow and Gallifet, each in his own land, received every honor, it is strange to relate that Whiting was dismissed for alleged disloyalty a few months after Gaines’ Mill, reinstated after the war, and mustered out of service at the consolidation in 1870. The action of the cavalry received the censure of the Commander-in-Chief and was made the reason for the removal of General Cooke from command. It is not worth while to argue the points of the controversy. The curious searcher after facts will find them in the abundant writings of both Federals and Confederates.

This battle gave a strange instance of the fortune of war. Hood had served as a lieutenant under Whiting in the regiment before the war. Now, at the head of a Confederate brigade, he received the char-e of his former comrades. After the fight, finding Chambliss so desperately wounded on the field, he saw that his old friend had every care and attention. Such encounters were frequent. It was Fitzhugh Lee’s own regiment of Virginia cavalry that overwhelmed Royall’s outpost at Old Church, captured part of his old troop and wounded a couple of officers. The Rebellion records show that Confederate commanders took some pride in reporting to the Commander-in-Chief that they had encountered his old regiment.

Several years of reconstruction duty, in small detachments, over almost every Southern State, varied by an occasional scrap with guerillas, and much destruction of moon-shine whiskey, were followed, in the fall of 1868, by orders to the frontier of Nebraska and Kansas. 

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