The conditions were complied with. Two of the other boys became captains in the Sixth Michigan cavalry; the other went out as sergeant-major of the Twenty-first Michigan infantry and arose in good time to be a captain in his regiment.
The government, during the earlier period of the war, was slow to recognize the importance of the cavalry arm of the service. It was expensive to maintain, and the policy of General Scott and his successors was to get along with as small a force of mounted men as possible, and these to be used mostly for escort duty and for orderlies around the various infantry headquarters. There was, consequently, in the cavalry very little of what is known as "esprit de corps." In the South, the opposite policy prevailed. At the First Bull Run, the very name of the "Black Horse cavalry" struck terror into the hearts of the Northern army, though it must be confessed that it was rather moral influence than physical force that the somewhat mythical horsemen exerted. Southern men were accustomed to the saddle, and were as a rule better riders than their Northern brethren. They took naturally to the mounted service, which was wisely fostered and encouraged by the Southern leaders, and, under the bold generalship of such riders as Ashby, Stuart, Hampton, Fitzhugh Lee, Rosser, Mosby, and others, the cavalry of the army of Northern Virginia surpassed that of the army of the Potomac both in numbers and in efficiency. McClellan says in his book that he often thought he made a mistake in not putting "Phil" Kearney in command of the cavalry. There is no doubt about it. Kearney had just the right sort of dash. If he had been given a corps of horse, with free rein, as Sheridan had it later on, "Phil" Kearney might have anticipated by at least two years the brilliant achievements of "Cavalry Phil" Sheridan. But the dashing one-armed hero was fated to be killed prematurely, and it was not until 1863, that Pleasanton, Buford, Gregg, Kilpatrick, and Custer began to make the Union troopers an important factor in the war; and Sheridan did not take command of the cavalry corps, to handle it as such, until the spring of 1864. Even then, as we shall see later, he had to quarrel with the commander of the army in order to compel recognition of its value as a tactical unit upon the field of battle. It was to Hooker, and not to Meade, that credit was due for bringing the cavalry into its proper relation to the work of the Northern army.