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On leap year eve of February 28, 1864, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a large Union cavalry raid was launched on the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia by the infamous Union cavalry general, Hugh J. Kilpatrick (b.1836-1881). Dahlgren Attacks Confederate Homeguards, March 1, 1864 A force of almost 4000 blue jacketed cavalrymen attacked Richmond in and around the James River in an ultimately costly and failed raid which threatened the very heart of the Confederacy. This attack on Richmond can be termed the Kilpatrick-Dahlgren Raid or Dahlgren’s Raid by military historians, the former in posthumous honor (or infamy) of the young cavalry officer, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren (b.1842-1864) whose 450 Union raiders nearly succeeded in penetrating Richmond. Known to modern historians as the Dahlgren Affair, this failed Union attempt to storm Richmond in order to free Union prisoners of war and to controversially assassinate Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his rebel cabin...

The influence of the American Civil War 1861-1865, on all three major aspects of tactical warfare in the 19 th century; land, naval, and logistical strategies, is one of the great studies in warfare from the 16 th -19 th centuries. In popular history and memory, the cavalry of both North and South, fighting from Pennsylvania, to farthest reaches of American territory in the West, have become and almost an unmatched icon of American military history from the period 1800-circa 1900. General Philip Sheridan rallying the Union Army at the Battle of Third Winchester (Opequon), a critical battle in the Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864, which helped Lincoln win re-election Cavalry played an integral role in the Civil War and in many of its battles though their role in pitched battles, on open terrain battlefields was relatively marginalized due to technological breakthroughs in weaponry, the horse soldiers’ role as irregular, raider, pillager, and guerrilla force was one of the most disti...

On this day in 1864 the Union Army under the command of General Ambrose Burnsides, (b.1824-1881) in an attempt to break the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia (June 1864-April 1865), exploded an over 500 foot mine dug under Confederate defense in the weeks before in an attempt to overrun General Robert E. Lee's (b.1807-1870) positions. Battle of the Crater, July 30, 1864 Burnsides, the now iconic namesake of sideburns became infamous for this half-cocked, immensely dangerous and ultimately very costly assault. He became the scapegoat and was truly to blame for the disastrous & pointless attacks that followed the explosion of 320 kegs of black powder in the mine dug weeks before by engineers. The explosion failed to open a significant breach anywhere along the Confederate lines. It succeeded in creating a large and relatively deep crater, a sort of canyon or hole which later cost thousands of Union lives during futile charges and assaults to break t...

On this day in 1898, the 1st Volunteer cavalry known popularly as the Rough Riders, under the command of the future 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt (b.1858-1919), made their famous assault on the Spanish positions at San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War of April-December 1898. Roosevelt's Rough Riders won national and international recognition for their part in the greater American victory in the Spanish-American conflict fought in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam. Roosevelt in his Brooke's Brothers tailored uniform, 1898 The Spanish-American War began in 1898 after the mysterious explosion of the USS Maine in  Havana  harbor. At first the war was Naval clash of arms, between the rising United States of America, fighting together as a whole nation once again, and a declining empire, Spain, who as a result of the war would loose all over their overseas possessions except for Morocco. After the  US  congress pas...