of war
campaign, Nellie was ridden every day and
active in every engagement from August
1863 through April 1864. In one fray,
she fell and her rider was taken prisoner.
Nellie, however, scrambled to her feet and
escaped to swim the Tennessee River and
regain Union lines. (After a few days the
cavalryman tromped into camp.) Later
Nellie was with Sherman’s march into
Georgia. Through it all, she was always
sure-footed, regardless of rocky passes or
the darkest night. She knew, one observer
said, “The shriek of a shell and the
direction of their flight, almost as well as
her owners.”
Horses frequently took bullets for their
masters. The Confederate general J. O.
Shelby had 24 horses shot from under
AZintheSaddle.com
him. Forrest had even more – 39. The
highest Union toll goes to Gen. George A.
Custer: 11.
Mounts of famous generals became almost
as well-known as their riders: among
others, Ulysses S. Grant’s Cincinnati, Lee’s
Traveller, Custer’s Custis Lee, Stonewall
Jackson’s Little Sorrell, Philip Sheridan’s
Rienzi and George G. Meade’s Old Baldy
(wounded five times in battle).
At the 1864 battle of Cedar Creek in
the Shenandoah Valley, en route from
Washington, Sheridan rode Rienzi hard to
meet and regroup his fleeing forces, after
General Early’s Confederates had broken
their lines. As Sheridan rode among them,
the men “threw up their hats, shouldered
their muskets, and as I passed along
turned to follow with enthusiasm and
cheers.” Sheridan directed: “We must face
the other way; we will go back and recover
our camp.” They did.
Sources: Boston Evening Transcript, July 22, 1863 and Sept. 2,
1864; Boston Herald, June 21, 1864; Thomas Nelson Conrad,
“Rebel Scout”; C. Kay Larson, “Great Necessities”; James
M. McPherson, “Battle Cry of Freedom”; Jeffrey R. Morris
and Richard B. Morris, eds., “Encyclopedia of American
History”; National Museum of the Morgan Horse; Elizabeth
Brown Pryda “Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee
Through His Letters”; Philip Sheridan, “Memoirs”; U. S., War
Department, Official Records of the Union and Confederate
Armies; Anthony Waskie, “Old Baldy.”
C. Kay Larson is a member of the board of the New York
Military Affairs Symposium and the author of “Great
Necessities: The Life, Times, and Writings of Anna Ella
Carroll, 1815-1894 and “South Under a Prairie Sky: The
Journal of Nell Churchill, U. S. Army Nurse and Scout.”
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