A Brief History of the Tenth Michigan Cavalry

What emerges from these pages is not strategy or politics, but the raw endurance of men on horseback through three years of war. L.S. Trowbridge, writing from within the ranks, gives us the Tenth Michigan Cavalry's story in vivid, unsentimental detail: the brutal winter marches through Kentucky and East Tennessee, the endless outpost duty, the fortification of Strawberry Plains, and the shock of combat at Carter's Station and Blue Springs. The narrative reaches its dramatic apex at Greenville, where a surprise pre-dawn strike shattered Confederate positions and killed the legendary John H. Morgan. We follow the regiment through Stoneman's devastating raid, the defense of Knoxville's approaches, and the long hunt for Jefferson Davis after Lincoln's assassination. Throughout, Trowbridge captures what modern readers hunger for in Civil War literature: the specific texture of cavalry life, the bonds between officers and men, the quiet heroism of holding a line. This is military history written from the saddle, valuable not for grand strategy but for what it reveals about the soldiers who fought, suffered, and survived the war's final years in the Western Theater.