From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw

Excerpt: ...these gibes at the cavalry expressed a serious, tho’ mistaken idea, they had of them. Upon the advance of the enemy, of course, we were accustomed to see cavalrymen hurrying in from the outposts to the rear, to report. So the thoughtless infantry, not considering that this was “part of the large and general plan,” got fixed in their minds an association between the two things,-the advance of the enemy, and, the rapid hurrying off to the rear of the cavalry, until they came to have the fixed idea, that the sight of the enemy always made a cavalryman “hungry for solitude.” They reasoned that, as a mounted man was much better fixed for running away than a footman, it was, by so much, natural that he should run away, and was, by so much, the more likely to do it. Pg 106 Also, our orders to move and to go into battle were always brought by horsemen; so the horsemen were thought about as causing others to fight instead of doing it themselves. So, in short, it came to pass, that this innocent infantry had a dim sort of notion that the chief end of the cavalry was, in battle time, to run away and bring up other people to do the fighting, and in quiet time, to “range” for buttermilk and other delicacies, which the poor footmen never got. Hence the soubriquet of “buttermilk ranger” universally applied to the cavalry by the army. But, I assure you, that all this was dispelled at once, and for good and all, at Spottsylvania. Here had these gallants gotten down off their horses. They hadn’t run anywhere at all; didn’t want anybody else to come, and fight for them. They had jumped into about five or six times their number of the flower of the Federal infantry. They met them front to front, and muzzle to muzzle. Of course they had to give back; but it was slowly, very slowly, and they made the enemy pay, in blood, for every step they gained. They had worried these Federals into a fever, and...