Trivia 11-13-18 six-shooters

[Trivia Master]

What cavalry commander compared sabres to cornstalks and had his men armed with two six-shooters and their charges combined the effect of fire and shock?

credit: @Stony

 

[hughes]

Mosby

 

[Jimklag]

John Singleton Mosby - Source

 

[SWMODave]

John Mosby - "I believe I was the first cavalry commander who discarded the sabre as useless and consigned it to museums for the preservation of antiquities. My men were as little impressed by a body of cavalry charging them with sabres as though they had been armed with cornstalks" and "I think that my command reached the highest point of efficiency as cavalry because they were well armed with two six-shooters and their charges combined the effect of fire and shock."

Source

 

[UCVRelics]

Mosby

 

[Schwallanscher]

john singleton mosby - full story

 

[skirmisher]

John S. Mosby
https://spartacus-educational.com/USACWshenandoah.htm

 

[BlueNGrey]

Good one, Stony,
The answer is John Singleton Mosby, the "Grey Ghost"

Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage
By Grady McWhiney, Perry D. Jamieson

 

[DBF]

That would be the Gray Ghost - John Mosby
"Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage" by Grady McWhiney, Perry D. Jamieson, page 132.

 

[Copperhead-mi]

The Gray Ghost, John S. Mosby

 

[ErnieMac]

John S. Mosby.

 

[GS]

John Mosby

 

[Stony]

Enjoy.

 

[luinrina]

That was the Gray Ghost, John Singleton Mosby (December 6, 1833 – May 30, 1916).

Sources: his memoirs (p. 284-285), Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage (p. 132):

 

[Brenal]

John Singleton Mosby

 

[Zella]

That's the Gray Ghost! John Singleton Mosby.

https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/mosby/mosby.html?highlight=WyJSb2JlcnQgSHVzdG9uIE1pbHJveSJd , pages 284-286

Here were his thoughts on the matter from his memoir:

I believe I was the first cavalry commander who discarded the sabre as useless and consigned it to museums for the preservation of antiquities. My men were as little impressed by a body of cavalry charging them with sabres as though they had been armed with cornstalks. In the Napoleonic wars cavalry might sometimes ride down infantry armed with muzzle-loaders and flintlocks, because the infantry would be broken by the momentum of the charge before more than one effective fire could be delivered. At Eylau the French cavalry rode over the Russians in a snowstorm because the powder of the infantry was wet and they were defenseless. Fixed ammunition had not been invented. I think that my command reached the highest point of efficiency as cavalry because they were well armed with two six-shooters and their charges combined the effect of fire and shock. We were called bushwhackers, as a term of reproach, simply because our attacks were generally surprises, and we had to make up by celerity for lack of numbers. Now I never resented the epithet of "bushwhacker" - although there was no soldier to whom it applied less - because bushwhacking is a legitimate form of war, and it is just as fair and equally heroic to fire at an enemy from behind a bush as a breastwork or from the casemate of a fort.

The Union cavalry who met us in combat knew that we always fought on the offensive in a mounted charge and with a pair of Colt's revolvers. I think we did more than any other body of men to give the Colt pistol its great reputation.
A writer on the history of cavalry cites as an example of the superiority of the revolver a fight that a squadron of my command, under Captain Dolly Richards, had in the Shenandoah Valley, in which more of the enemy were killed than the entire total by sabre in the Franco-Prussian War. But, to be effective, the pistol must, of course, be used at close quarters.

 

[kholland]

John Singleton Mosby

 

[Eleanor Rose]

John Singleton Mosby

 

[WJC]

What cavalry commander compared sabres to cornstalks and had his men armed with two six-shooters and their charges combined the effect of fire and shock?

credit: @Stony

John S. Mosby (1833-1916), who claimed "to be the first cavalry commander to discard the sabre as useless and consign it to museums.... My men were as little impressed by a body of cavalry charging them with sabres as though they had been armed with cornstalks." He added "I think that my command reached the highest point of efficiency as cavalry because they were well armed with two six-shooters and their charges combined the effect of fire and shock."
<John S. Mosby, The memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1917 ), pp. 284, 285>

 

[MC44]

John Singleton Mosby