User:Aleutian06/List of Arkansas Confederate Cavalry Units

Arkansas Confederate Cavalry
Arkansas mounted units during the civil war consisted of three types, Cavalry, Mounted Infantry, and Partisan Rangers. Cavalry forces fought principally on horseback, armed with carbines, pistols, and especially sabers. Only a small percentage of Arkansas mounted forces met this definition. Some Arkansas Confederate regiments carried shotguns, especially early in the war. Due to a lack of appropriate weapons and training in actual cavalry tactics, most Arkansas horsesoldiers were actually Mounted Infantry. Mounted Infantry moved on horseback but dismounted for fighting on foot, armed principally with rifles. In the second half of the war, most of the units considered to be cavalry actually fought battles using the tactics of mounted infantry. Irregular forces (partisan rangers or guerrillas) were generally mounted forces. There is little commonality as to their weapons&mdash;in general, any available were used.

While the concept of a mounted infantry force able to move quickly from point to point and fight as infantry seemed appealing, especially to new recruits, it proved to come at significant costs. Logistically a mounted force was much more costly to sustain and the units themselves tended to be less effective in the actual war effort than standard infantry formations.

Due to severe drought in Arkansas in 1862 and 1863, forage for horses became increasing scares and led to calls from multiple Confederate commanders to dismount the mounted units. Multiple Confederate commanders lamented the fact that the country had been "eaten out" by cavalry. General Hindman at one point stated:

Mounted infantry, while theoretically more maneuverable, were in practice less disciplined and less reliable than the standard infantry formation. Confederate commanders, especially in the Department of the Trans-Mississippi regularly bemoaned the fact that most recruits wanted to "jine the cavalry" as opposed to infantry. Confederate commanders often suggested dismounting cavalry and mounted infantry units in order to man infantry units and this happened to several Arkansas units that served in the Army of Tennessee.

The continued organization of more and more mounted units, and the retention of so many others, in the Department of the Trans-Mississippi seem to defy prevailing military wisdom. The last standard infantry regiment formed in Arkansas during the war was the 39th Arkansas Infantry Regiment, formed in 1862. After 1862 all new organizations were mounted infantry.

List of Cavalry Regiments
Cavalry regiments were organized from companies (also called, "troops") authorized at up to 100 men, ten companies made up a regiment. Two or more companies might be organized into a battalion (also called a "squadron").

Orphan Arkansas cavalry units listed on the National Park Service Soldiers and Sailor System
The Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System is a computerized database containing very basic facts about servicemen who served on both sides during the Civil War. The system contains names and other basic information from 6.3 million soldier records in the National Archives. The facts about the soldiers are indexed to many millions of other documents about Union and Confederate Civil War soldiers maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration. The information includes: histories of regiments in both the Union and Confederate Armies, links to descriptions of significant battles of the war, and other historical information. The site currently includes regimental histories of units from 44 states and territories. Joseph Crute's Units of the Confederate Army is the primary source for Confederate unit histories on the site. Because the list of units was compiled over thirty years after the war, from very fragmentary records collected by the United States War Department, some units are misidentified, some being listed as regiments that may in fact have only been a company, such as Brandenburch's Arkansas Cavalry Regiment, which in fact was actually composed of one independent cavalry company surrendered at the battle of Arkansas Post. Several Missouri units are miss-identified as Arkansas Confederate units, such as "Coffee's Arkansas Cavalry Regiment", which is actually the 6th Missouri Cavalry. The site contains several alleged Arkansas Confederate units for which no other information exists other than short list of names, probably developed from prisoner of war rosters. Most of these units have less than six identified unit members. Several have only one identified unit member. The following units have no published history and may not have actually been Arkansas Confederate units: