Headquarters Twelfth Army Corps,
April 6, 1863.
I wish you could have seen the great military display there
was near here yesterday. You probably have seen by the papers that President
Abe is paying a visit to the army; he came down in the great snow-storm
Saturday night. Well, yesterday was appointed for a grand review of all the
cavalry and horse artillery in the army. All the Major-Generals and many of the
Brigadiers with their staffs were invited to be present. Our cortege left these
headquarters about half-past ten. We made a pretty good show by ourselves;
there were five general officers, namely; Major-General Slocum,
Brigadier-Generals Williams, Ruger, Knipe and Jackson, with their staffs and
escorts, all in full fig. We rode about seven miles to the reviewing ground and
got there just as the President, General Hooker and their large retinue
arrived; the artillery fired the salute and the review commenced.
In the centre opposite the troops, looking sick and worn
out, dressed in a plain black suit with the tallest of stove-pipe hats, was the
President, seated on a fine horse with rich trimmings. On his right and left
were Generals Hooker and Stoneman, and clustering around on all sides were
Major and Brigadier-Generals too numerous to mention.
You know the story of a man who threw a bootjack out of a
hotel window in Washington, last winter, and hit six brigadiers and a dog, and
said, “It wasn't a good night for brigadiers, either.” Yesterday was a good day
for them. Who would have thought, five years ago, that such a sight as this
would ever be possible in democratic, republican America. I doubt if any
country has ever seen so large a collection of officers of high rank; there
could not have been less than a thousand officers of all grades in the
cavalcade, and now-a-days most every one dresses well; so you can imagine that
such a crowd, well mounted on handsome horses with rich housings, was a gallant
and gay sight. The cavalry was in two lines, each about two miles long; there
were nearly ten thousand of them. I never have seen anything like such a number
of horsemen together before. Generally they looked very well; the best
regiments in appearance were the First and Second United States and the First
Massachusetts and the First Rhode Island. There were four batteries of horse
artillery, and the last one went by "flying." You know the term, “horse
artillery,” is given to those batteries where all the gunners are mounted; this
enables them to keep up with the cavalry.
SOURCE: Charles Fessenden Morse, Letters Written
During the Civil War, 1861-1865, p. 124-5
