User talk:Intothatdarkness/U. S. Army Remount Service

Hey sandboxes have talk pages! I'll move stuff here.

see Horses_in_warfare for info, also. Horse regiments date to 1855, post-Mexican War. Article has some footnotes to swipe, maybe
 * reply - horse regiments go back to the 1830s actually, but they were called dragoons and a single regiment of Mounted Rifles raised specifically for Oregon Trail service
 * Reply, state regiments of various forms date to the American Revolution, agreed, mostly dragoons, but pressure for a national corps came about in the wake of the Mexican War, where the need for fast-moving cavalry beame evident, with some additional inspiration coming out of McClellan's studies of European cavalry during Crimea... fascinating stuff, either way
 * Reply-not doing the historical quibble just because, but the dragoon regiments existed at the Federal level before the Mexican War. The Second Dragoons had service in the Seminole Wars prior to that. What confuses things is that their history shows up with the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Regiments today. And the only real difference between US dragoons and cavalry was the name. They operated in the same way really.
 * I certainly will not quibble over which kind of units were what because I tend to avoid getting into military history debates, but I sure know that some folks go into high dudgeon over the nuances! (I had this minor edit war in the HIW article over why we didn't cover the winged hussars adequately.  Oh my... LOL!)  What I do is teach the first semester survey US History for a college, so I'm more of a big picture person who occasionally dips into the minutae of something -- like the unbridled ego of George McClellan in the course of the Civil War, and if such inquiries lead me on an equestrian side trip, (I guess we gotta give him  his due for his contributions to US Cavalry) all the better!!
 * My geekhood credentials are actually in the study of how tangential fields such as psychology or geography shape history; here, the point I was after was the US Government taking a more active role in creating horse-based regiments after recognizing that leaving it to the locals to provide critters was a bit too hit and miss: we had a major shift due to the Mexican War because of the dramatic changes in terrain and hence tactics that were required.  Suddenly, the fast-moving cavalry regiment was the hot new technology, as opposed to the styles that had developed for warfare on the eastern seaboard.   (Similarly, I can make a pretty good case that chasing Pancho Villa into Mexico at the turn of the 20th Century also had a significant impact of the American Cavalry as it entered WWI.) It's ironic, in a way, that the US took so long to get organized with its use of horses in warfare that they really only got it together just before tanks took over.  Europe had been figuring out how to produce better warhorses for centuries, though constantly had to change their goals as technology changed. The social history implications of this stuff are kind of fascinating too...we as a nation sort of took the availability of horses for granted for a long time.  Only as they were becoming obsolete did we start to understand their value. But now I'm rambling.  As you were...  Montanabw (talk) 03:29, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * One must always ramble. It's where the good thoughts come from sometimes. Actually, the bigger push for mounted units within the Army itself came from the Oregon Trail. And even then there was a great deal of fiscal resistance within Congress to the formation of another mounted unit, coupled with the great reluctance at that time to have any sort of large standing army (your psychological side in action). The biggest single increase in mounted strength before the Civil War came while Jefferson Davis was the Secretary of War (with the creation of the 1st and 2nd Cavalry regiments), followed by another jump just after the Civil War. Numbers then stayed pretty static until just after the Spanish-American War.Intothatdarkness (talk) 15:53, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Hm. I suppose this stemmed from the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851)?  I suppose of most interest here were the predecessors to the remount service, the attempts to have government-owned animals available for troops.     Montanabw (talk) 22:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)


 * That's where the regimental boards came into play. Remounts were usually purchased by agents of the Quartermaster Bureau with screening and evaluation done by boards of officers sent on detached duty from their regiments. The Regiment of Mounted Rifles actually formed in 1846, so it was before the Laramie treaty. I would say that the 1st and 2nd Cavalry most likely got some push from that treaty, but the 1st was quickly soaked up by Bleeding Kansas, and the 2nd operated mainly in Texas between 1855 and the start of the Civil War. The 2nd actually had the reputation of being an elite unit, as its horses were specially purchased in Kentucky and Secretary of War Davis took a great interest in the selection of its officers.Intothatdarkness (talk) 14:19, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Fascinating. When you have this article up and going, we may need to use its sources to update and improve the "Americas" section of HIW. Montanabw (talk) 15:36, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Cheesy reference, but a starting point for some 20th century history of the remount: http://www.arabianhorses.org/education/education_history_usarmy.asp
 * I really wish I still had access to a whole rack of Quartermaster Journals that I had at a previous job. They broke down ALL the stallions in the remount system by breed on a yearly basis. Working from memory, the bulk were Thoroughbreds, with the next-highest number Arabians. In spite of claims to the contrary, the Morgan was a very small percentage of the total (single digits, if memory serves). The Army had concluded that they were better suited to field artillery service. I need to get back on this, but I'm not sure if I want to fight off the hordes of breed enthusiasts who will claim that "their" breed was the backbone of the cavalry even thought they have no real historical evidence to back that claim (had to deal with that at another job).Intothatdarkness (talk) 15:57, 6 February 2012 (UTC)


 * It's absolutely fascinating study! Maybe look for stuff by W.R. Brown, who did a bunch of studies with Arabians and Morgans to convince the Army of how good Arabs were.  I've run across various things in Arabian horse publications on this.  Maybe the original stuff is buried somewhere in the National Archives web site or at the US Army's web site.   Montanabw (talk) 18:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
 * But then we'd have original research. Gasp... Like I said, this stuff was well-documented in the Quartermaster Journal. I just don't have access to them any more. I remember some also appearing in the Cavalry Journal for obvious reasons. Much of the talk about ideal breeds took place either before or just after World War I. One knock they had for the Arabian was carrying capacity. No one in the trials questioned their stamina. It was akin to the "California horse versus the American horse" debate of the Indian Wars period.Intothatdarkness (talk) 20:45, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Take it live?
I think you have enough to take this article into the mainspace, and in doing so, eliminate dozens of redlinks! Want to do so? Montanabw (talk) 21:03, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure. I'm not done with it, but honestly the Vietnam stuff has sidetracked me enough that I'm not sure when I'd get it "finished." Intothatdarkness (talk) 21:05, 15 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Your call, it's your sandbox, but maybe a quick wrap of what's left to add and then go live. With the sources you have, possible others could continue to expand... Montanabw (talk) 21:14, 15 June 2012 (UTC)