The Union Cavalry in the Civil War
The War in the East from Gettysburg to Appomattox, 1863-1865
The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Volume II continues the story of the cavalry's operations in the East from July 1863 to Lee's surrender in 1865. Stephen Z. Starr follows the role of the cavalry in the early Sheridan engagements in the Shenandoah Valley and the cavalry's march from Winchester, Virginia, to rejoin the Army of the Potomac in March 1865. The dynamic energy of the battles described here emanates from Philip Sheridan, the motivating power behind the cavalry's greatest success in the final April 1865 battles of Dinwiddie Court House, Five Forks, and Sayler's Creek. In addition to the descriptions of raids—Sheridan's Yellow Tavern and Trevilian Station raids and James H. Wilson's Staunton River raid—and operation of the cavalry in support of the Army of the Potomac, the volume covers the development of tactics and more effective leadership, increasing reliance on firepower, the growing strategic importance of the cavalry, and the establishment of the Cavalry Bureau.
Stephen Z. Starr's definitive trilogy on the history of the Union cavalry includes The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Volume I: From Fort Sumter to Gettysburg, 1861-1863, The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Volume II: The War in the East from Gettysburg to Appomattox, 1863–1865 and The Union Cavalry in the Civil War, Volume III: The War in the West,1861–1865, completed shortly before his death in 1985. His other books are Colonel Grenfell's Wars: The Life of a Soldier of Fortune and Jennison's Jayhawkers: A Civil War Cavalry Regiment and Its Commander.
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