Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 03.djvu/151

Rh they were armed differently—dragoons, with muskets and sabres, to serve on foot or on horseback, as occasion might require; mounted riflemen, with rifles, to move on horseback with celerity, but really to serve on foot in action; and cavalry, with sabres and pistols—or short carbines—to serve on horseback in action and in the pursuit. Such was the case when the two regiments of dragoons, the mounted rifle regiment and the two cavalry regiments were respectively organized. The modern improvements in fire-arms, and especially the introduction of breech-loaders, have rendered useless the distinction between the different kinds of mounted troops, as they have destroyed the distinction between heavy and light infantry and riflemen serving on foot. When, therefore, the two regiments of cavalry were formed in 1855, they were really formed as and intended to be a distinctive arm of the service.

The statement that Mr. Davis, as Secretary of War in 1855, filled the new regiments of cavalry "with his creatures" is, perhaps, a mistranslation of the phrase in the original French. The term "creatures," as used in the translation, would be generally accepted by all English-speaking people as a term of reproach, indicating that the persons appointed by Mr. Davis were his dependents, sycophants and parasites men—who had no claim to respect themselves, but were subject to his will and control. To speak of a man as the creature of the Almighty Creator conveys no reproach, but to call him the creature of another man, is to apply to him one of the most opprobrious epithets in the English language. It is therefore probable that the translator, in rendering the French phrase into English, while giving the literal version, has failed to observe the difference between the idiom of the two languages. It is presumed that the idea intended to be conveyed by the author was, that the appointees of Mr. Davis were of his own selection; for it is hardly to be supposed that he intended to intimate that such men as Generals George B. McClellan, Edwin V. Sumner, Wm. H. Emory, John Sedgwick and George H. Thomas, of the Federal army, and Generals Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, Wm. J. Hardee and J. E. B. Stuart, of the Confederate army, all of whom were among the original appointees to the two regiments of cavalry organized in 1855, were the creatures of Mr. Jefferson Davis, in the sense in which that term would be understood by Englishmen and Americans.

The idea that Mr. Davis, in filling the appointments for the new regiments, was influenced by dislike of the officers of the regular