Started studying James Harrison Wilson some 25 years ago. He graduated the year ahead of Custer at West Point. Was selected to command a cavalry division in the Army of the Potomac in 1864. Custer who held a brigade command in that division, was transferred to another division.
Wilson started supplying all the cavalry corps, as Cavalry Bureau Chief, with Spencer carbines in 1864, making the Union cavalry far superior to the Confederate cavalry arm.
Whitworth, I got to take some shots here. The cavalry wasn't superior, just the guns. We borrowed some of those when Wilson's boys left 'em lying around or simply decided to hand them over.
Wilson led the largest independent cavalry action of the war with his raid into Alabama and Georgia, near the end of the war.
He simply had the most men in his cavalry after March 1865, about 13,000 by various estimates. Forrest's combined divisions in 1863 and 1864 approached that number but only for short periods. Wilson in Alabama and Georgia in 1865 was simply "mopping up". The Army of Tennessee, aside from Forrest and Taylor, whom he whipped in Selma on April 2, 1865, was already in South Carolina on their way to Bentonville.
Wilson's cavalry command at Nashville flanked Hood's army, leading to the virtual destruction of an army in the field in one day.
I don't believe Hood's army was "flanked". I will accept that Wilson's boys (Hatch) drove the Confederates back along Hillsboro Pike and started the collapse of the Confederate line. James R. Chalmers was in the way of a "flank". Didn't happen.
Wilson had his faults and his enemies. President Johnson never forgot Wilson took Johnson's horses to equip the cavalry defending Nashville.
Wilson stated that he stopped the pursuit of the AOT in Pulaski because he had already lost close to 5,000 animals during the prior couple of weeks. It was not a good time to be a horse in Tennessee.
Fell out of favor with President Grant, when Wilson's brother, a government lawyer, prosecuted some of Grant's appointees.
General Wilson commanded U.S. troops in Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War.
Went on to command U.S., British and support troops from the British Colonial Empire in battle in China, during the Boxer War.
And most Americans know the general who rode into one great Ambush!