Book: Register ...

Home
Sponsor
Book: Register ...
Book: Bravest Man in Lee's Army

The Black Horse Cavalry:
An Annotated Bibliographical Register of Members of the Company

Click on the painting at the top of the home page
for information about the image on the cover jacket.
-- permission pending --

 

The Register alphabetically lists every enlisted member of Company H, 4th Virginia Cavalry, named
the Black Horse Cavalry. It includes a genealogical entry on each man. In addition, it contains separate
chapters for obituaries, bibliographic material, stories and letters for those men for whom these are available. The hardcopy edition will include photographs. 

An introduction provides local framework, historical context, and a very brief overview of the unit's military career. However, this book is not intended as a military history and should not be considered as such. The focus of the Register is the men who fought for their country, their communities, and their ideals.

Around 300 men from Fauquier and surrounding counties served in the Black Horse Cavalry over the course of the war. At any one time, around 80 to 100 men were in active service.

You can download a current draft of the Register as a PDF (3Mb, circa 1,100 pages, July 2006)

You will need Acrobat Reader to read a PDF file. It is free from Adobe. Click here:

 

The Beginning

MORE ABOUT THE TERRIBLE BLACK HORSE. Alexandria, July 25, 1861. I overheard one of the men sitting on the doorstep of the house describing the charge of the Black Horse Cavalry, part of which, I be­lieve, is Capt. Scott's Fauquier cavalry. He said they advanced in a wedge form, then opened, disclosing a battery which fired upon his regiment, and that then the cavalry charged upon the regiment, hemming it in on all sides; and, cutting right and left with tremendous blows, each blow powerful enough to take off a man's head. He said he never wished to see such a charge again.

The Richmond Daily Inquirer, quoting the Baltimore Exchange

The Ending

To the Black Horse Troop. In tender memory of the dead with affectionate greetings to the living. My proudest thought is that I was one of them.

James Keith, Black Horse Cavalryman
and Chief Justice, Virginia Supreme Court