The Boy Generals by Adolfo Ovies

Author:Adolfo Ovies [Ovies, Adolfo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9781611215359
Google: M2BVzQEACAAJ
Publisher: Savas Beatie
Published: 2021-06-15T22:11:13+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

This Game Determines Who is the Best Man

THE BATTLE-TESTED MEN of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac marched through Aldie Gap on June 17, 1863. They deployed onto the road net and spilled out into the magnificent fields beyond that rolled higher and higher until meeting the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Often overlooked by historians, the fight for the mountain passes after the battle of Brandy Station would be pivotal in the Cavalry Corps’ development. Over the next few days, Pleasonton’s troopers would brawl with Stuart’s cavalry in a series of wide-ranging, free-flowing, take-whatever-break-nature-gives-you fights, with every level of command on both sides firmly focused on one objective: the gaps in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

In those contested fields, the young officers—many of them citizen-soldiers just as courageous, tactically gifted, and devoted to the Union as any Regular cavalry officer—would begin staking their claims to positions of command. Between that day and the surrender at Appomattox, many of those men would be gone. Some would be killed in action. Others would suffer horrible wounds, never to return to active duty. Many would end up in some of the South’s most notorious prison camps. Still others would just fade away, their bodies crushed by disease or their faith ruined by the horrors they had witnessed.

The good majority would go on to make fine cavalry officers, bold and resourceful in combat. They had learned to care for the lives and comforts of their men in camp life and had become fiercely protective of the command’s horse flesh. The quality of the leadership that rose to the top of the Cavalry Corps was such that Sgt. James Clark would one day elaborate: “Space will not allow the justice due them in this paper, but take one, a type, Rodenbough… . His case will illustrate the points for the others. What a superb, magnificent specimen of manhood—a right down royally good cavalryman, yet as graceful and accomplished, always as if bound by the social conventions of a drawing room, and as genial in greeting on all times and occasions as if a comrade with his playfellows.”1

Both George Custer and Wesley Merritt passed through Aldie Gap on that sweltering day. Once across, Custer took the road to Ashby’s Gap while Merritt headed north toward Snicker’s Gap and into a warren of stone walls and fences, woodlands, and marshes. Custer embraced the saber while Merritt put his faith in a reliable carbine. Even as the Union cavalry rode toward the fight for the mountain passes, a long-running debate about the future of cavalry operations—begun on another continent entirely—would erupt again with arguments not of ink and paper, but of lead and steel.2

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