Rienzi - Age, Height, & Markings

[lelliott19]

*
I had heard that Rienzi was a gift from Archibald T. Campbell, then a Captain in the 2nd Michigan Cavalry. Evidently, Campbell found the young gelding difficult to manage. I don't think I ever knew the horse was only three years old when Sheridan received him. If, as the writer of this article below reports, the horse was 3 years old in 1862, and died in 1878, then he would have been 16 years old when he died.

Frank Bury Woodford explains how the horse came to Sheridan in the book, Father Abraham's Children: Michigan Episodes in the Civil War, Wayne State University Press, 1961, p. 264.

Campbell, born in 1832, entered the service from Port Huron as captain in the 2nd. Although a capable officer, Campbell won his fame obliquely by the gift of a horse to Sheridan. The steed, a three-year-old Morgan gelding, was jet black except for three white feet. It stood sixteen hands high. The horse was foaled on a St. Clair County (Michigan) farm and was presented to Campbell by the citizen of Port Huron. Campbell found the steed unmanageable and regarded it as vicious. Sheridan, however, fancied the animal and in August 1862, after some fighting around Rienzi, Mississippi, Campbell gave it to Sheridan, who named it Rienzi. It caused him no trouble. Sheridan described the horse as strongly built, with great powers of endurance, 'and so active that he could cover with ease five miles and hour at his natural walking gait.'
​

*Image atop post from Young Folks' History of the Civil War by Mrs. C. Emma Cheney (Estes and Lauriat, Boston 1884).

 

[Mrs. V]

Morgans are really neat horses. I am betting that being ridden every day had a great deal to do with his better behaviour. Either that or Sheridan had better hands.