Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/356

 soldier fell in front of the army in a charge, and laid there "for pavement to the abject rear, like an entered tide they rush by and leave him hindmost, his good office and services too soon forgotten." Each cavalryman had to supply himself with a horse and turn it over to the Government (have him mustered in), for which the Government agreed to pay him $10 a month and to supply him food and shoes and nails, and a blacksmith to do his shoeing, free of expense to him.

It was a Government of our own making. We all felt sure it would do the very best it could for us; but we soon realized that we had its prayers, as it had ours, but that it did not possess and could not furnish us in sufficient quantities the supplies our pressing necessities demanded, and we also knew that the efficiency of a command was exactly in proportion to the way in which it was fostered and guarded. Experience soon demonstrated that we must help the Government, and its need demanded our best efforts. We were in a war, and "he was not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the hive because the bees have stings."

A soldier can cheerfully submit to personal privations and toil, his mind and spirit keeps him buoyant, but a horse loses spirit and strength, and the more spirit he has the worse it is for him as soon as his rations are cut down and double duty imposed upon him. We could get grass sometimes, when corn could not be had, and when in camp they could live; but the finest horse in the best physical condition, casting a shoe on a rough, rocky road and forced rapidly over it, will be rendered wholly unfit for service in half a day. The cavalry were used as couriers, scouts, guides—the eyes and ears of the army. They were expected to move promptly and quickly, the loss of a shoe was not taken as a valid excuse when dispatch was demanded. Few men well enough off to furnish their own horses, could nail on a horse-shoe (if he had the tools), and if he had extra shoes and nails in his saddle-pocket, and the company's blacksmith was sick or absent, what could he do? The service was too precarious to admit of wagons accompanying an expedition, so that, with the best management, it often happened neither shoes, nails or smith could be had. I have seen my men many a time have the hoof of a dead horse strapped to their saddles, which they had cut off at the ankle with their pocket-knives, and would carry them until they could find a smith to take it off with his nippers, and thus supply their sore-footed steeds. In the Valley the roads were McAdamized, and exceedingly hard on the horses' feet. One horse,