"After a recent presentation, a member of the audience asked me what I thought of the relationship or bond between a cavalryman and his horse. In short, I believe the men formed a strong bond with their horses in the first two years of the war, especially Southerners who brought their own horses from home. I say this, because the odds of a horse lasting for a long period of time were better in the early years of the war than in the later years. I have never collected the popular heart-tugging postwar accounts of the bond, however, and thus have no real evidence to support my belief, beyond the commonsense idea that the mounted arm lost more horses and at a faster rate, as the cavalry saw, not just more combat, but more sustained intense combat.
I have long felt that by the summer of 1863, Union troopers saw their horses more as a piece of equipment than as a favored pet back on the farm. As an example, consider that most of the men in George Stoneman's Cavalry Corps received new horses in early April 1863. When the men returned from Stoneman's Raid, thousands of them needed another horse. I believe the corps may have lost a thousand horses, killed, wounded, lamed, or otherwise disabled at Brandy Station, and another thousand during the fighting in the Loudoun Valley. One regiment counted 72 horses lost on the march between the Potomac River and Gettysburg. These would have been non-battle related losses incurred on the march to the battlefield, but not to include the battle. If each regiment had lost a like number, the corps would have suffered the loss of nearly 1900 horses during the same few days. All of which begs the question as to how many men lost their horse in each instance or even in several of these examples? The men might have named each horse, but I doubt many had time to form a bond that would have led to the tender stories from aging veterans.
The question reminded me, however, that I have had a note on my desk for nearly a year regarding a letter Union general Alexander Hays wrote to his father on March 22, 1864, from his camp at Stevensburg, Virginia. During the winter encampment, the Army of the Potomac had been consolidated; old units disappeared, and Hays lost his division. The consolidation led to no end of discontent, at all levels, but fewer commands meant fewer generals, and Hays found himself commanding a brigade. While many of his letters reflect his displeasure at the demotion, he also speaks often of his horses. He rode nearly every day, inspecting his lines, his pickets, his camps and visiting with his men. He clearly had a bond with his horses, as evidenced by his contemporary letters, rather than reminiscences decades later…"
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Armand
