The 1st Maine Cavalry Regiment was a volunteer United States cavalry unit from Maine used during the American Civil War.
Service history The regiment was organized in Augusta, Maine, on October 31, 1861, and served for three years. The original members were detached from the regiment on September 15, 1864, when their service was up, and mustered out back in Portland on November 25. Later recruits, along with the Maine men of the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry (men recruited in the Augusta, Maine area between January and March 1864 and consolidated into seven companies) and those who chose to reenlist, were retained in the regiment. The regiment was split into three battalions of four companies each. One battalion was made up of former 1st District men and the other two were a mix of 1st Maine veterans and DC men. These three battalions continued until the regiment's mustering out at Petersburg, Virginia, on August 1, 1865.
Initial organization in 1861 Maine had responded to Lincoln and Congress's April 25, 1861, call for ten regiments of infantry of which eight had been organized and left the state by the end of August. That month the federal government had put out a call to Maine for five more regiments of infantry, six batteries of light artillery, a company of sharpshooters, and a regiment of cavalry to serve three years.
This cavalry regiment was intentionally raised at large from all counties of Maine and organized into twelve companies. The regiment's staff consisted of a colonel, lieutenant colonel, three majors, a first or second lieutenant as adjutant, surgeon, assistant surgeon, chaplain, regimental quartermaster, regimental commissary of subsistence, and three first or second lieutenants serving as battalion quartermasters. The regiment rated a sergeant major, a sergeant as a chief bugler, a veterinary surgeon, a regimental quartermaster sergeant, regimental commissary sergeant, hospital steward, saddler sergeant, sergeant farrier, and an ordnance sergeant. A captain commanded each company in the 1st Maine with a first lieutenant and a second lieutenant commanding the two platoons. The company commander also had the aid of a company first sergeant, a company quartermaster sergeant, a company commissary sergeant, a farrier, and a sergeant acting as the company commander's orderly. Each lieutenant in the platoon had two sergeants, four corporals, a bugler, and 39 privates. This gave each company a paper strength of 100 men.
The regiment had high standards for its recruits and the quality of its mounts. Recruiters were to enlist "none but sound, able-bodied men in all respects, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five years of correct morals and temperate habits, active, intelligent, vigorous, and hardy, weighing not less than one hundred and twenty-five or more than one hundred and sixty pounds" While the average United States Infantryman was 26 and 5′ 8.25″ tall and 155 pounds, the average United States Cavalryman was the same age but slightly shorter at 5′ 7″ and lighter at 145 pounds. It encamped at Augusta at the State Fairground, renamed Camp Penobscot, where recruits initially learned military discipline and drill. Horses would arrive in December.
The 1st Maine Volunteer Cavalry Regiment mustered into federal service at Augusta on November 5, 1861, as a three-year volunteer cavalry regiment. It was commanded by Col. John Goddard from Cape Elizabeth. A Regular Army cavalry officer, Lt. Col. Thomas Hight, was the second-in-command. Another regular, Capt. Benjamin F Tucker served as the Adjutant with the rest of the field and staff officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) being Maine men. In the companies, apart from the Company H commander, Capt. George J. Summat and the 1st Lieutenant in Company L, 1st Lt. Constantine Taylor, all the company officers and NCOs were Maine volunteers.
The 1st Maine had an advantage in recruiting over the infantry and artillery. Many recruits found the idea of riding rather than walking incredibly attractive. Also, the cavalry had an air of glamor and romance that the other branches did not have: There hung about the cavalry service a dash and an excitement which attracted those men who had read and remembered the glorious achievements of 'Light Horse Harry' and his brigade, and of 'Morgan's Men' in the revolutionary war, or who had devoured the story of 'Charles O'Malley,' and similar works. In short, men who had read much in history or in fiction, preferred the cavalry service.
It is unclear whether the 1st Maine received either the 1854 cavalry shell jacket or 1857 sack coat or both. The army did issue all ranks the same standard sky-blue double-breasted winter overcoat with attached cape and a rubberized poncho for rainwear. They also received the special sky-blue wool cavalry trousers with the reinforcing double layer in the seat and inside leg due to the expected extended time in the saddle.
Training, deployment, and operations in 1862
There were prejudices against the cavalry in the War Department as it was originally thought it would not be of much use during the expected short period of conflict. Maj. Gen. George McClellan felt that it took a minimum of two years to professionally train volunteer cavalry and that they would have nothing to do but be couriers and pickets. There was also the added factor that the cost to equip and mount a Union cavalry regiment in 1861 was between $500,000 and $600,000, or roughly twice that of an infantry regiment. Some of the leadership in the command understood the lack of faith: The men of the south were born horsemen, almost. Old and young were nearly or quite as much at home on horseback as on foot, and the horses, also, were used to the saddle. Therefore, they could put cavalry regiments into the field with great facility and in comparatively good fighting condition, as witness the famous Black Horse Cavalry. In the northern and eastern states, it was different. Equestrianism was almost one of the lost arts. Few, especially in cities, were accustomed to riding, and the great majority of men who would enlist in the cavalry must learn to ride and to use arms on horseback, as well as learn drill, discipline, camp duties, and the duties of service generally. "A sailor on horseback," is a synonym for all that is awkward, but the veriest Jack tar on horseback was no more awkward than was a large proportion of the men who entered the cavalry service in the north and east.
While the federal government figured out where to send the regiment, they continued training at the camp living in army issue camp tents through a cold winter. The recruits were soon finding the reality of cavalry life to be quite different from their preconceived notions. The command stressed the importance of caring for their mounts and had a stable built before the first horses arrived. The necessary caring for their means of mobility, their mounts, made the men's days busier and longer than the infantryman's. During the cold, in which the regiment lost 200 men to disease and injuries, the men noted that their horses "had quarters that winter more comfortable than did the men, in comparison with the usual accommodations for man and beast".
When Edwin Stanton replaced the disgraced Simon Cameron as Secretary of War, the 1st Maine narrowly avoided disbandment before they even saw service. They were saved by the intervention of an officer who was impressed by their enthusiasm and rapid learning. As training continued, the men and horses gradually meshed into a cohesive unit overcoming the fact that many horses had no prior experience with being ridden and some of the men had no prior experience riding.
Col. John Goddard, a lumberman, was disliked by the regiment because he was a strict disciplinarian and a rigid moralist, but many of the regiment's veterans later credited his hard hand with making them soldiers. However, he was disliked by almost all such that some officers went to Augusta threatening to resign if he was not removed. Governor Washburn wanted no problems, so Goddard resigned his commission on March 1, 1862. Maj. Samuel H. Allen was commissioned Colonel by the governor and took command. To replace him, Capt. Warren L. Whitney of Company A was promoted to Major. In turn, 1st Lt. Sidney W. Thaxter was made Captain and new Company A commander. Due to being passed over in favor of Allen, Lt. Col. Hight resigned and returned to command his company, in the 4th U.S. Cavalry. At that time, the regiment was organized into three battalions: 1st Battalion (under Maj. Warren L. Whitney with companies A, D, E and F), 2nd Battalion (under Maj. Calvin S. Douty with companies B, I, H and M), and 3rd Battalion (under Maj. David P. Stowell with companies C, G, K and L).
Still without weapons, the 1st Maine's training was drawn from the experience and training of the regular army personnel assigned to the regiment and concentrated on getting the men and their horses to work efficiently as a team in the various formations called for by cavalry regulations. The officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) read and studied their copies of two manuals, McClellan's Regulations and Instructions for the Field Service of the United States Cavalry in Time of War and Cooke's, Cavalry Tactics, or, Regulations for the instruction, formations, and movements of the cavalry of the army and volunteers of the United States (both published in 1861 at the start of the conflict). Through these manuals and the guidance of the regulars, the Maine troopers learned the various formations for travel and combat, the basics of setting up pickets and vedettes, and the various bugle calls to command and coordinate all these activities.
Dismounted drill was of secondary importance, but it was not forgotten. The lack of sabers was part of the shortage that plagued the U.S. volunteer cavalry organizations during the first year of the war led to "some ludicrous improvisations". The 1st Maine's solution was to buy wooden laths: Some time during the winter laths were procured, for the purpose of learning and practicing the sabre exercise. These were made into swords of the most grotesque shape by the men, and the exercise was looked upon very generally as a farce, was 1aughed at by outsiders, and was discontinued after a very short time; yet there is no doubt that the rudiments of the use of the sabre learned with the aid of those wooden swords was never forgotten, and proved to be of advantage when the real sabre was put into the hands of the· men. No arms were furnished, except a few old muskets for use on guard duty, till the regiment arrived at Washington.
Departure for Washington and the front Col. Finally, in March the regiment was ordered to the front in Virginia. 1st Battalion left for Washington on Friday, March 14, 1862, under command of Col. Allen, arriving on Wednesday, the 19th without Allen who had fallen sick and was hospitalized in New York City. Delayed by a late winter snowstorm, 2nd Battalion departed Augusta on Thursday, March 20, under Maj. Douty, arriving on Monday, the 24th. On that day, 3rd Battalion under Maj. Stowell left and pulled into DC on the 28th.The battalions all entrained in box cars in Augusta, eight horses and men per box car, and rode to New York city via Portland, Boston, and Providence. After a ferry across the Hudson, the detachments had a more comfortable transit to Washington with the horses in the box cars, but the men in passenger cars.