I cannot conceive such an anomaly as a thorough Yankee _horseman_. Given--one, or a span of trotters, to be yoked after the neatest fashion, and to be driven gradually and scientifically up to top-speed--the Northerner is quite at home, and can give you a wrinkle or two worth keeping. But this habit of hauling at horses, who often go as much on the bit as on the traces, is destructive to "hands." If the late lamented Assheton Smith were compelled to witness the equitation here, he would suffer almost as much as Macaulay in the purgatory which Canon Sidney imagined for the historian. I have discussed that Martingale-question with several good judges and breeders of American blood-stock, but I never could get them _quite_ to agree in the absurdity of tying down a colt's head for the rest of his natural life, without regard to his peculiar propensities--star-gazing, boring, or neutral. The custom, of course, never could prevail where men were in the habit of crossing a country; but an American horse is scarcely ever put at anything beyond the ruins of a rail fence, and there are few, north of the Potomac, that I should like to ride at four feet of stiff timber. It is very different in the South, where many men from infancy pass their out-door life in the saddle: from what I have heard, Carolina, Louisiana, and Georgia--to say nothing of the wild Texan rangers--could show riders who, when the first strangeness had worn off, would hold their own tolerable in England, over a fair hunting country, in any ordinary run.
On the outbreak of the war, volunteers enlisted in the Federal cavalry, who--far from being able to manage a horse--could not bridle one without assistance; and a conscript, who could keep his saddle through an entire day, without "taking a voluntary," was considered by his fellows as a credit to the regiment, and almost an accomplished dragoon. Such a thing as a military riding-school has, I believe, never been thought of, away from West Point; the drill is simply that of mounted infantry. Things are better now than they were; a Federal cavalryman can at least sit saddle-fast, to receive and return a sabre-cut; there have been some sharp skirmishes of late, and, allowing for exaggeration, Averill's encounter with Fitzhugh Lee brought out real work on both sides.