STEPHEN Z. STARR
The Third Ohio Volunteer
Cavalry: A View from
the Inside
Anyone sufficiently interested in a
Civil War regiment to make an
intensive study of its history would
normally begin with the Official
Records. Its 128 ponderous volumes contain a bare chronicle
telling
where the regiment was at any given
time, which larger units it was a
part of from time to time, and what its
varying fortunes were
in the scouts, expeditions, skirmishes,
fights, and battles in
which all or parts of it participated.
The chronicle is never complete,
for it is the residue of a double
process of elimination. Only a fraction
of the events making up the day-to-day
life of a regiment was of suffi-
cient importance to require formal
reports to higher authority, and an
even smaller fraction of the vast mass
of reports and orders originat-
ing from, or issued to, the regiment
was selected for inclusion in the
Official Records.
The many official, semi-official, and
unofficial compendiums of
state participation in the war, such as
Lurton Dunham Ingersoll's
Iowa and the Rebellion and Whitelaw Reid's Ohio in the War, usually
present little more than a colorless
chronological account of the cam-
paigns, marches, and battles of the
regiments from their respective
states.2 They are in many
ways the counterparts on paper of the life-
less, mass-produced Civil War monuments
that decorate-if that is
the right word-thousands of village
greens and town squares, North
and South.
General John Beatty wrote in the
preface to his reminiscences of
the Civil War, "who can really
know what an army is unless he ming-
les with the individuals who compose it
and learns how they live,
think, talk and act?"3 For
that kind of information, for the intimate
Mr. Starr is Director
of The Cincinnati Historical Society.
1. U.S., War Department, The
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C.,
1880-1901).
2. Published, respectively, in
Philadelphia, 1866; and Cincinnati, 1868.
3. John Beatty, Memoirs
of a Volunteer, 1861-1863 (New York, 1946), originally
published under the title The
Citizen Soldier (Cincinnati, 1879).
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry
307
human detail that adds the breath and
color of life to recitals that are
of limited value even to the military
historian, resort must be had to
the regimental histories, some eight
hundred of which were published
from 1865 to 1925.4 One of
Bruce Catton's most fruitful contributions
to Civil War historiography was to
recognize the value of regimental
histories as primary source material,
and to use them extensively and
with great effect, initially in his
history of the Army of the Potomac.5
Disregarded by earlier generations of
historians as beneath the "dig-
nity of history," they are an
invaluable source for every conceivable
aspect of the Civil War, everything the
men experienced and felt dur-
ing their service: their opinions on
every possible topic, and the most
significant as well as the most trivial
things that happened to them
from day to day.6
Then, too, the war was followed by a
spate of high-level memoirs
and reminiscences. For the most part
these were formal narratives
concerned with the "big
picture," their stiffness and ex cathedra
quality varying with the rank of the
gallant author.7 A significant
minority of such reminiscences, however,
the work of lesser lights-
line officers and enlisted men-provide
valuable glimpses of the
human shape of the war, and change it
from an impersonal map exer-
cise to what it really was: a compound
of discomfort, hunger, pain,
boredom, dedication, courage,
companionship, and good cheer.8 In
these books, the immaculately tailored
and barbered limestone hero
descends from his perch atop the Civil
War monument and is revealed
4. Stephen Z. Starr, "The Grand Old
Regiment," Wisconsin Magazine of History,
XLVIII (Autumn 1964), 23. For a listing
of regimental histories, see E. C. Dornbusch,
Regimental Publications &
Personal Narratives of the Civil War (New
York, 1962).
5. See Bruce Catton's studies: Mr.
Lincoln's Army (Garden City, 1951); Glory Road
(Garden City, 1952); A Stillness at
Appomattox (Garden City, 1953).
6. See Starr, "Grand Old
Regiment," 27. There were of course dozens of histories of
brigades, divisions, army corps, and
armies, but they were "formal" histories and
lacked the human quality of most
regimental histories.
7. For example, see U. S. Grant, Personal
Memoirs, 2 vols. (New York, 1885-1886);
G. B. McClellan, McClellan's Own
Story (New York, 1887); P. H. Sheridan, Personal
Memoirs, 2 vols. (New York, 1888), and W. T. Sherman, Memoirs,
2 vols. (New York,
1875).
8. For example, Rufus R. Dawes, Service
with the Sixth Wisconsin Volunteers
(Madison, 1962), originally published in
1890; John Beatty, Memoirs of a Volunteer,
1861-1863 (New York, 1946), originally published in 1879; John D.
Billings, Hardtack
and Coffee (Chicago,
1960), originally published in 1888; F. Colburn Adams, The Story
of a Trooper (New York, 1865); Augustus Buell, "The
Cannoneer": Recollections of
Service in the Army of the Potomac (Washington, 1890); John W. DeForest, A
Volunteer's Adventures (New Haven, 1946); Isaac Gause, Four Years with Five
Armies
(New York, 1908); Stanton P. Allen, Down
in Dixie; Life in a Cavalry Regiment in the
War Days (Boston, 1893). The publication of wartime diaries and
letters did not really
begin until the 1920s.
308 OHIO HISTORY
as he really was: a ragged, dirty,
cheerful lad, without a care in the
world beyond his next meal, impatient of
all authority, and deter-
mined to have as good a time as the
elements, the enemy, and his
own officers would allow.
There is still another body of source
material, virtually unused,
which sheds light on the life of a Civil
War regiment and on the men
composing it. Army regulations required
every regiment, and every
company within the regiment, to maintain
Order and Letter Books.
These books, if faithfully kept, contain
a great deal of routine infor-
mation about the members of the regiment
and company: names, vital
statistics, muster-in, discharge,
wounds, promotions, demotions, de-
sertion, muster for pay, equipment and
weapons chargeable to them,
the state of their clothing allowance,
et cetera.9 More importantly
from the historian's point of view, they
also contain copies of all re-
gimental orders and circulars,
transcripts of all reports and letters
sent, and of all brigade, division,
army, department, and War De-
partment orders applicable to the
regiment, and a great deal of miscel-
laneous information about its internal
affairs and economy.
The Order and Letter Books, collected
when the volunteer regi-
ments were mustered out of the service
and now housed in the Na-
tional Archives in Washington, are
official records. Hence they are
not a depository for the anecdotes and
entertaining trivia that fill the
pages of most regimental histories.10
The ad hominem information is
there, sometimes on the surface and
sometimes between the lines.
Regimental historians wrote their books
about comrades and friends
who in the postwar years had reached, or
were reaching, the status of
respectable fathers and pillars of the
community. In the salad days in
the army, many of them had been guilty
from time to time of behavior
a recital of which would not have made
edifying reading for wives,
children, and fellow vestrymen. Most
regimental historians took the
safe way out. As the historian of the
First Maine Cavalry put it, "one
of the negative determinations was that
no unpleasant thing should ap-
pear relating to the personal record of
any comrade."11 Besides, even
9. The entries in these books are more
or less complete, depending on the strains
and stresses of campaigning, the wishes
of regimental and company commanders, and
the conscientiousness or lack of it of
the regimental adjutant. The books of the Third
Ohio Cavalry are much less complete than
those of other cavalry regiments.
10. The existence of these books is most
inadequately reported in Kenneth W.
Munden and Henry P. Beers, Guide to
Federal Archives Relating to the Civil War
(Washington, D.C., 1962), 404-05; it is
hoped that the National Archives and Record
Service will eventually publish a
detailed catalogue of its 1600 feet of papers in the
series "Volunteer Regiments,"
Record Group 94.
11. Edward P. Tobie, History of the
First Maine Cavalry (Boston, 1887), 736.
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry 309
the minority of regimental historians
who were willing to describe the
grave military and ethical derelictions
of their comrades were reluc-
tant to suggest that the dedication of
these comrades to personal
cleanliness, for example, left much to
be desired. The Order and Let-
ter Books are fortunately free from all
such inhibitions, and record in
detail the peccadilloes and the sins of
omission and commission of all
"comrades," whatever their
rank.
The Third Regiment of Volunteer Cavalry
was one of thirteen
mounted regiments raised in Ohio.
Recruited in August 1861 by Lewis
Zahm of Norwalk, its personnel came
mainly from the northwestern
corner of the state. After five months
in camp, first at Monroeville
and then at Camp Dennison outside
Cincinnati, the regiment cam-
paigned as part of General Don Carlos
Buell's Army of the Ohio in
Tennessee, Northern Alabama, Northern
Mississippi, and Kentucky.
Next, in William S. Rosecrans' Army of
the Cumberland, the regi-
ment was present at the Battle of
Stone's River, took part in the Tul-
lahoma and Chattanooga campaigns, and
then campaigned in East
Tennessee. In the summer of 1864, the
regiment, now the Third Ohio
Veteran Volunteer Cavalry, was in Sherman's Atlanta campaign
and
in Judson Kilpatrick's ill-fated raid to
destroy the railroads south of
Atlanta. Its final campaign, under
General James H. Wilson, was the
raid-more properly called the
invasion-that captured Selma and
Montgomery, Alabama, and Columbus and
Macon, Georgia.
The Third Ohio Cavalry was one of
sixty-two three-year regiments
raised in Ohio which published a
regimental history in the postwar
years. Written by former Sergeant Thomas
Crofts and published in
1910, it is a somewhat wooden
compilation.12 After a promising start
describing the formation of the regiment
and the trials of its first few
months of existence, it is, for the
period of three years from the
spring of 1862 to muster-out in August
1865, little more than a succes-
sion of the action reports, copied from
the Official Records of its
commanders and the commanders of the
brigades and divisions of
which the regiment was a part. To
connect these reports there is a
nearly day-by-day chronicle of marches,
scouts, foraging expeditions,
and time spent in camp, based on the
wartime diaries of a few mem-
bers of the regiment. As Crofts warns in
his brief preface, "many
incidents and details are from necessity
left out of the history that
would have tended to make it both
cumbersome and monotonous."13
More "cumbersome," no doubt,
but also far more interesting.
12. Thomas Crofts, History of the
Service of the Third Ohio Veteran Volunteer
Cavalry (Toledo,
1910).
13. Ibid., 4.
310 OHIO HISTORY
Much that Crofts failed to record in his
history has survived in his
regiment's Order and Letter Books. The
books were not kept as con-
scientiously as the regulations
required, or as one would like. They
are inferior in that respect to the
records of many other regiments, but
they do provide a great deal of valuable
information. They show that
Colonel Zahm was an indefatigable
correspondent, bombarding
everyone in authority, as he doubtless
had to do, with pleas for the
many things he needed to get his
regiment equipped. In October 1861,
he wrote directly to
Quartermaster-General Montgomery C. Meigs to
complain about the quality of the horses
he was receiving:
They are coming in on an average of 25
per day. Among them, in almost
every lot, I discover more or less unfit
for Cavalry service. What is my duty
in regard to them? Shall I have them
accepted . . . irregardless of their fitness
for service? . . .I have demurred with
the Quartermaster, told him I did not
feel like receiving horses that were not
fit for service. He told me that I was
obliged to receive anything in the shape
of a horse which he sent in, whether
he was good for anything or not. Please
to instruct me in regard to it.14
In mid-November, having in the meantime
received a total of 990
horses (twenty-five of which were
already "disabled and not fit for
service"), Zahm asked General Meigs
"to have the kindness to have
. . . bought for [him] at once" 260
to 275 more, enough to mount the
remainder of the regiment plus fifty to
seventy-five spares.15 A week
later Zahm repeated his plea that the
balance of the horses he needed
be purchased, and added a request that
must have elicited a grim
smile from the harassed
Quartermaster-General, who, with a staff of
thirteen clerks, was trying to equip an
army that was in the process of
exploding from 17,000 men to 600,000 in
seven months. Included in
the 600,000 were 55,000 cavalry, all
clamoring for horses. Said the
Colonel, "As far as we have
received horses, I have coloured them to
one colour in the different Companies,
would therefore be pleased to
have the purchaser of the horses consult
with me as to the colours."16
14. Zahm to M. C. Meigs, October 11,
1861, Third Ohio Volunteer Cavalry,
Regimental and Company Order and Letter
Books, "Volunteer Regiments," Record
Group 94, National Archives. All orders,
circulars, and letters referred to below may
be found in this series on the Third
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry at the National Archives
unless otherwise noted.
15. Zahm to Meigs, November 11, 1861.
16. Zahm to Meigs, November 16, 1861. In
this letter, Zahm also asks Meigs for
"funds to pay for Forage, Fuel, etc
.... We are in want of said Funds very much. Our
Contractors, who are furnishing us with
those articles, refuse to furnish much longer,
unless we can pay them, as they have
advanced as much money as they possibly can
raise . . . here we are in the middle of
November and are not able to pay a cent on last
month's furnish."
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry 311
Colonel James W. Ripley, Chief of
Ordnance, also received com-
munications from the energetic Colonel
Zahm. Based on the approval
Ripley had previously given him, Zahm
had placed contracts locally
for 1,200 saddles at $27.50 each, all
1,200 to be delivered within thirty
days (they were not), but having been
unable to purchase spurs, curry
combs, and blankets at the prices
Colonel Ripley had specified, he
asked to have these articles furnished
by the Ordnance Bureau.17
Then came the problem of weapons.
Clearly a believer in the old
adage that more flies are caught with
honey than with vinegar, Zahm,
after reminding Colonel Ripley that he
had sent in his requisition for
arms for his regiment some time before,
paraded his reasonableness
with the declaration that
if you cannot send me the whole of my
requisition at present I would ask as a
special favor to me to send me sabres,
Pistols & Carbines enough to supply
one Squadron and send the balance as
soon as may be thereafter. I am anx-
ious for my command to get as efficient
as possible. Will you likewise send me
some Blank Cartridges to accustom the
horses to firing likewise some Ball
Cartridges for Target Practice.18
His anxiety to persuade the authorities
in Washington to take care
of his wants did not cause Zahm to
neglect anyone nearer home who
might be in a position to help. He wrote
Ohio Governor William Den-
nison in December that he had all his
horse equipment, but "no
arms of any kind, need them very
much."19 By January 20, 1862, the
regiment had received sabers, saber
belts and knots, and pistol
holsters, but this merely sharpened Colonel
Zahm's appetite. Two
days later he was writing Ohio
Quartermaster-General George B.
Wright, "can you not befriend us,
and help us to our pistols and car-
bines as soon as possible?"20 He
wrote the same day to Quartermas-
ter Colonel Thomas Swords at Louisville, Kentucky, and listed the
articles needed to complete the
equipment of the regiment: pistols and
carbines, guidons, colors, sashes for
the noncommissioned staff and
the orderly, company letters, the
numeral "3" and the crossed sabers
17. Zahm to J. W. Ripley, October 10,
1861.
18. Zahm to Ripley, October 25, 1861.
The records do not disclose whether Zahm
received the ball cartridges he requested. If he did,
and actually used them for target
practice, he was one of the small minority of cavalry
colonels who bothered (or had the
means) to provide target practice for
their regiments.
19. Zahm to Dennison, December 6, 1861.
20. Zahm to Dennison, January 20, 1862;
Zahm to G. B. Wright, January 22, 1862.
The regiment received revolvers and
carbines before it left Camp Dennison on
February 10, 1862. The carbines, all
single-shot breech-loaders, were of three different
makes-Sharps, Burnside, and
Remington-each requiring a different type of cartridge;
Crofts, Third Ohio, 19.
312 OHIO HISTORY
insignia for the men's hats, and bugles;
and Colonel Swords was be-
sought to "befriend" the
regiment by furnishing these articles as soon
as possible, so that it could "take
the field at an early day."21
A week after his letters to General
Wright and Colonel Swords, and
only two weeks before the regiment left
Camp Dennison for active
service in Tennessee, Colonel Zahm wrote
the state adjutant-general,
E. P. Buckingham, to explain that he had
not been furnished with
copies of the Cavalry Tactics nor of the
Army Regulations, and to ask
for a sufficient number of each for his
command.22 One wonders what
strange evolutions the regiment
performed at drill before the Tactics
arrived.
Like all other commanding officers,
Colonel Zahm had his full
share of disciplinary problems to deal
with. He had to remind the
regiment early in its existence that
"courtesy being essential in the
army . . . the enlisted men of the
regiment shall observe without fail
what is laid down in Army Regulations
which is that they shall salute
all officers. Officers saluted must
invariably return the salute in a
most respectful manner."23 Two
weeks later, in another order, Zahm
wrote, "the commanding officer
regrets to notice that intemperance is
so prevalent in the regiment. In order
to put a stop to so debasing a
crime in the future any persons bringing
liquor into camp will be se-
verely punished."24 In mid-December,
Zahm informed Governor Den-
nison that Second Lieutenant William
Goodnow, Company I, being
under arrest for "ungentlemanly and
unsoldierlike conduct," had ap-
peared before him and offered to resign,
to avoid being court-
martialed. Zahm told the Governor that
he had accepted Goodnow's
resignation, and explained that the
Lieutenant's offenses were "drunk-
enness, absence without leave and
neglect of duty. He lost all confi-
dence and respect of his men, who since
his arrest have petitioned me
for his removal."25 Why Zahm should
have felt it necessary to report
to the Governor the resignation of a
mere second lieutenant is puz-
zling until one reads the order Zahm
sent Goodnow a month later:
"You will report yourself forthwith
at these headquarters, to join
21. Zahm to T. Swords, January 22, 1862.
22. Zahm to E. P. Buckingham, January
28, 1862. The "Tactics" was what in
modern parlance would be called a drill
book. The "Army Regulations" were U. S.,
War Department, Revised United States
Army Regulations of 1861 (Washington, D.C.,
1861), the Bible of army administration,
which officers were expected to know
practically by heart.
23. Order No. 4, November 11, 1861.
24. Order No. 14, November 28, 1861.
25. Zahm to Dennison, December 18 and
20, 1861.
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry 313
your Company and Regiment."26 It
is not too much, perhaps, to as-
sume that political influence had been
brought to bear on Goodnow's
behalf.
Indeed, Goodnow's misconduct indicates a
major cause of the poor
discipline that plagued commanding
officers from the beginning of the
war to its end. The line officers were
as lacking in discipline as the
men, and the effect of their
indiscipline and misconduct was
obviously far more damaging than the
misbehavior of troopers.
Neglect of duty on the part of officers
was even more prevalent than
active misconduct. As early as November
1861, Zahm had to order
that at least one company officer be
required to attend all compnay
roll calls (Reveille, Retreat and
Tattoo) as well as all stable calls.27 In
February 1862, three months later, the
officers seemed to the Colonel
to need to be reminded once again of
their duties:
The Commanding Officer regrets to be
again called upon to notice the many
irregularities that pass by unnoticed by
Company Officers relative to their
duties, he therefore desires that one
officer of each Company will attend all
stable calls, and accompany his Company
to water, which officer he will hold
responsible for the attention of the
Company to the wants of the horses and
the stables.28
Nearly three years later, it was still
necessary for Colonel Charles B.
Seidel, who had succeeded to the command
of the regiment in 1863,
to remind his officers of this
requirement.29 In the same month, pre-
sumably because the earlier order had
not had the desired effect,
Colonel Seidel let it be known that
"any officer who shall suffer his
men to neglect his horse [sic] shall
be recommended for dismissal."30
The lack of discipline of the men was
expressed in all sorts of ways.
The regiment had hardly arrived in
Tennessee when Colonel Zahm
was forced to announce that "the
Commanding Officer desires that
26. Zahm to Goodnow, January 28, 1862.
Goodnow rejoined the regiment, and died
of typhoid at Corinth, Mississippi, May
22, 1862.
27. Order No. 4, November 11, 1861.
28. Orders No. 22, February 20, 1862.
29. General Orders No. 8, December 6,
1864. Zahm resigned January 5, 1863, and
was succeeded in command of the regiment
by Major (promoted to Colonel) James W.
Paramore, who in turn departed July 1,
1863 (he is variously listed as "resigned,"
"honorably discharged," and
"dismissed") and was succeeded by Lieutenant-Colonel
(promoted to Colonel) Charles B. Seidel
(Crofts, Third Ohio, 239; Reid, Ohio in the
War, II, 762, 768). Paramore was not without a sense of
humor. Asking to have his 2nd
Battalion returned to the regiment, he
gave as the reason that "they having been
detached ever since the middle of
January; and if it is a burthen, justice would require
that the other Regiments should share it, and if it is
a post of honor, we are perfectly
willing to share it"; Paramore to
W. H. Sinclair, June 14, 1863.
30. Circular, December 22, 1864.
314 OHIO HISTORY
the discharge of Fire Arms be
prohibited. Any violation of this order
will not under [any] circumstances be
tolerated. Battalion
commanders will without delay see that
the above order be strictly
observed, both in camp and on the line
of march."31 The men were,
and remained to the end, utterly
careless of the equipment issued to
them; there was a steady wastage that
orders like the following never
succeeded in stopping:
From the carelessness of the men having
charge of the horse equipage, etc., it
is necessary that steps be taken to put
a stop to it. Each article a man
receives is to be immediately charged to
him so that if lost he be charged on
the subsequent payroll the full value of
it. When anything he is so charged
with becomes worn out it will be
replaced by his producing the article he
wishes to exchange.32
As the previously quoted orders aimed at
officers indicate, the
failure of the men to take proper care
of their horses was an
ever-recurring problem. The constant
repetition of orders requiring an
officer to be present with each company
at stable calls was part of a
futile effort to get the men to groom
their horses. The equally
constant repetition of orders requiring
an officer to be present with
each company as it marched its horses to
water, evidenced an effort,
equally futile, to stop the men from
galloping their horses to water
even though they knew that watering an
overheated horse nearly
always meant a disabled animal.33 The
tremendous wastage of horses
is well accounted for by a multitude of
orders, of which the following
is an example:
Orders from Division Headquarters direct
that any man caught ill treating his
horse or neglecting to take good care of
him shall be transferred to some
Infantry Regiment to serve the remainder
of his time . . . One Regiment of
this Corps has already been dismounted
and made to perform the service of
infantry and if proper care is not taken
of the horses this Regiment may be
next . . . Any person caught galloping
his horse unless under orders will
immediately be arrested and punished.
These instructions will be made
known to the men that they may not ignorantly
disobey them.34
31. Order No. 26, March 9, 1862.
32. Orders No. 94, March 14, 1863.
33. Orders No. 22, February 20, 1862;
General Orders No. 46, August 24, 1863;
General Orders No. 8, December 6, 1864.
34. Circular, December 22, 1864. It is
an indication of the popularity of the cavalry
service, notwithstanding its special
hardships and dangers, that whenever cavalrymen
were ordered to do duty as infantry, a
near-mutiny resulted; but with a single
exception, infantry regiments eagerly
accepted offers to be converted to cavalry or
mounted infantry. The wastage of horses
was not always the fault of the officers and
men. For example, Lieutenant-Colonel
Douglas A. Murray, commanding the Third
Ohio Cavalry in Zahm's absence, reported
on one occasion that "many of my horses
are in a suffering condition from want
of Shoeing. Of shoes I have an abundance. Nails
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry 315
Policing the camps was drudgery that the
men evaded as much as
possible. Lieutenant-Colonel Horace N.
Howland, inspecting the
regimental camp in January 1865, found
it "very poorly cleaned and
parts of which was in a very filthy
condition and with little or no
policing done"; in the course of
the same inspection, he found "some
of the sentinels sitting on stumps,
others on the ground paying very
little attention to what was going on or
to their duties and very poorly
instructed."35 All this,
of course, was a reflection on the officers, at
least as much as on the men.
It was the common fate of cavalry
regiments until nearly the end of
the war to have a high percentage of
their men absent from the ranks
on detached service, doing duty as
escorts, dispatch riders, and
orderlies for brigade and division
commanders and staff officers.36
Discharges due to disability, furloughs,
men excused from duty
because of illness, desertion,
dismounted men, and battle casualties,
including men taken prisoner and
awaiting exchange, added up at
times to half or two-thirds of the
nominal strength of a regiment. But
the ineradicable urge of the men to
escape from camp or to straggle
on the march-sins to which the cavalry
was particularly prone
because of the mobility provided by
their overworked, underfed
horses-was as significant a cause as any
of these others in reducing
the number of men present for duty.
Orders forbidding straggling on
the march, orders forbidding
unauthorized absence from camp
(particularly on horseback), were all
without effect.37 It was in vain
that Colonel (later General) Eli Long, in
command of the brigade of
which the Third Ohio Cavalry was a part,
directed that
on the present march, and on all marches
hereafter . . . Regimental
Commanders have one Commissioned Officer
ride in the rear of each
Company to prevent straggling. ... It
will be the duty of these Officers, and
it will be required of them, to arrest
and turn over to the Provost Marshals of
I cannot procure. I have tried every
source and Failed"; Murray to J. B. Fry, August 5,
1862.
35. Howland to [name of addressee not
given] February 19, 1865.
36. Murray to J. W. Paramore (then
commanding the brigade), April 20, 1863;
"Herewith I . . . enclose the names
of men of the Third Ohio Cavalry who are now
detached, serving as escort and Orderlies
with the 1st Division. I would respectfully
request that owing to the reduced state
of the Regiment that they be ordered to report
for duty with their respective Companies
immediately."
37. For example, General Orders No. 35,
March 6, 1865: "The attention of
Regimental Commanders is again called to
... General Orders No. 8 ... which forbid
horses to be ridden outside of camp
except on duty. Hereafter if any man is found
outside of his regimental camp mounted,
except by proper authority or on duty, will be
at once dismounted, have his horse taken
away from him and turned over to another
regiment."
316 OHIO HISTORY
their Regiment, all Soldiers . . . who
are found out of the ranks without
proper permission and the Provost
Marshals will see that they are duly
punished.38
Leaving camp without permission or
straggling on the march were
usually the prelude to unauthorized
foraging, which was sometimes a
necessity but as often as not merely a
means of escaping the deadly
monotony of army rations and camp
cooking. Answering the
complaint lodged by an Alabama farmer
named Moses Maple, whose
hen roosts, beehives, and pigpens had
been laid under contribution,
Colonel Zahm explained that
I have no doubt but what my Regiment has
helped themselves to some
Chickens, but not to any extent, as I am
very strict in regard to plundering of
any kind, and punish very severely for
such conduct. None of these
depredations came to my notice as being
committed by my men, with the
exception of plucking green corn, apples
and peaches. As we have no
vegetables of any kind for the men, for
their health I send out daily, under
charge of a competent officer, a squad
of men after green corn, peaches or
apples, which is conducted orderly, and
only every 3 or 4 days a squad out of
the same company. I hold the Officer
strictly responsible for any
depredations.39
Colonel Zahm's apologia is typical in
that he blamed the men of
other regiments, not his own, for
Maple's losses. At the same time,
however, his use of the word
"depredations" indicates the real
danger of the men's propensity for
wandering about the countryside,
especially in enemy country. Foraging
was at times excusable, but as
the historian of another cavalry
regiment has explained, "this system
of foraging was made the means of many
great wrongs inflicted on the
citizens. As the men were not only
allowed, but compelled, to forage
for food, many stopped not when their
necessities were supplied . . .
and they carried on a wholesale robbery
business. Money, watches,
jewelry and valuables of any kind were
stolen by them."40 An order
issued in the summer of 1863, to the
brigade of which the Third Ohio
Cavalry was then a part, suggests that
even foraging, as distinguished
from "depredations," often got
out of hand:
The colonel commanding the brigade
regrets to learn that a Regiment of this
Command has sent out on one or more
occasions . . . forage parties without
any authority and in violation of
existing orders ... Complaints have become
so numerous against the command, of the
irregular and illegal manner in
which forage has been taken by
unauthorized parties and by irresponsible
38. Circular, August 19, 1863.
39. Zahm to J. M. Wright, August 21,
1862.
40. Lyman B. Pierce, History of the
Second Iowa Cavalry (Burlington, 1865), 11.
Ohio Volunteer Cavalry 317
squads of men that it becomes again
necessary to call the attention of
Commanding Officers to the matter and to
caution them against allowing such
violation of orders.41
The wandering habit once established led
to evasions of duty that
endangered the safety of the regiment.
Thus, Trooper William
Godfrey was sentenced to three months at
hard labor, to be
performed with a ball and chain attached
to his ankle, to forfeiture of
pay and allowances for the same period,
and at its end, a
dishonorable discharge, having pleaded
guilty to the charge that
"while . . . posted as a Vidette .
. . [he] desert[ed] his post . . . going
to a house about 4 rods distant."42
There is a danger in reading the long
sequence of orders,
prohibitions, complaints, warnings, and
admonitions that fill the bulk
of the space in these Order and Letters
Books, requiring officers and
men to do, or to refrain from doing,
things which should have been
done, or not done, as a matter of
course. One has to remember that
there was no need for entries in these
books when officers and men
were doing their duty and generally
behaving themselves. Reading the
order reducing to the ranks Sergeant
William Van Wormer "for
disobedience of orders" should not
cause one to forget that numerous
enlisted men progressed on merit to
noncommissioned and
commissioned rank; indeed, seventy of
the officers of the Third Ohio
Cavalry had started the war as enlisted
men in the regiment.43
Having command of a regiment of
volunteers was no sinecure in
1864 or 1865, any more than it had been
in 1862, and keeping its
officers and men up to the mark, even
imperfectly, called for
dedication and leadership qualities
beyond the ordinary. As a former
volunteer cavalryman wrote after the
war, in the matter of officers
"as in many others, a good colonel
is the father of his regiment. The
influence of such a man is something
wonderful. Good colonels make
good regiments, and good captains make
good companies."44 Two of
the three colonels of the Third Ohio
Cavalry-Colonels Zahm and
Seidel-were capable officers. It was an
effective regiment they led,
for all the military misdeeds of its
personnel, misdeeds which in any
case they had in common with the
temporary warriors that made up
the other two thousand-odd volunteer
regiments in the Union armies,
41. General Orders No. 45, August 13,
1863.
42. Special Orders (unnumbered),
September 13, 1864; Crofts, Third Ohio, 239-96.
43. Special Order, unnumbered, September
13, 1864; Crofts, Third Ohio, 240-96.
44. [Frederick Whittaker], Volunteer
Cavalry-The Lessons of a Decade, by a
Volunteer Cavalryman (New York, 1871),
31.
318 OHIO HISTORY
or, for that matter, that they shared
with their temporarily separated
countrymen in the Confederate armies. It
should be remembered to
their credit that many of the same men
who evaded camp duties
whenever they could, failed to take care
of their horses, equipment,
and weapons, disobeyed inconvenient
orders, and generally drove
their officers to distraction, also
stuck it out to the end of a bloody
four-year war, and, amid hardships and
terrors inconceivable to a
later generation, produced a victory for
the Union.
STEPHEN Z. STARR
The Third Ohio Volunteer
Cavalry: A View from
the Inside
Anyone sufficiently interested in a
Civil War regiment to make an
intensive study of its history would
normally begin with the Official
Records. Its 128 ponderous volumes contain a bare chronicle
telling
where the regiment was at any given
time, which larger units it was a
part of from time to time, and what its
varying fortunes were
in the scouts, expeditions, skirmishes,
fights, and battles in
which all or parts of it participated.
The chronicle is never complete,
for it is the residue of a double
process of elimination. Only a fraction
of the events making up the day-to-day
life of a regiment was of suffi-
cient importance to require formal
reports to higher authority, and an
even smaller fraction of the vast mass
of reports and orders originat-
ing from, or issued to, the regiment
was selected for inclusion in the
Official Records.
The many official, semi-official, and
unofficial compendiums of
state participation in the war, such as
Lurton Dunham Ingersoll's
Iowa and the Rebellion and Whitelaw Reid's Ohio in the War, usually
present little more than a colorless
chronological account of the cam-
paigns, marches, and battles of the
regiments from their respective
states.2 They are in many
ways the counterparts on paper of the life-
less, mass-produced Civil War monuments
that decorate-if that is
the right word-thousands of village
greens and town squares, North
and South.
General John Beatty wrote in the
preface to his reminiscences of
the Civil War, "who can really
know what an army is unless he ming-
les with the individuals who compose it
and learns how they live,
think, talk and act?"3 For
that kind of information, for the intimate
Mr. Starr is Director
of The Cincinnati Historical Society.
1. U.S., War Department, The
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official
Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (Washington, D.C.,
1880-1901).
2. Published, respectively, in
Philadelphia, 1866; and Cincinnati, 1868.
3. John Beatty, Memoirs
of a Volunteer, 1861-1863 (New York, 1946), originally
published under the title The
Citizen Soldier (Cincinnati, 1879).