The Cavalry Saber
Sword and scabbard images courtesy of Poulin Antiques & Auctions, Inc. (poulinauctions.com); Library of Congress
In March 1868, Assistant Adjutant General Robert Williams replied to a query from George A. Otis, curator of the Army Medical Museum, about the nature of saber use during the Civil War. Williams, whose first wartime assignment was as colonel of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry, responded that, while “hand to hand skirmishes between cavalry during the late rebellion were not at all infrequent,” saber wounds “were slight and generally harmless,” as the weapon was “in few instances sharpened, and the men were almost totally uninstructed in its use.” Furthermore, given the wartime advances in “long-range and repeating weapons,” Williams believed the saber would “soon” be “regarded as obsolete.”
Indeed, while the advances in weaponry cited by Williams had fueled doubts about the necessity of sabers—and the mounted troops who carried them—both sides spent considerable resources raising and equipping cavalrymen with the fearsome-looking weapons. Shown here are statistics associated with Civil War sabers, in particular the Model 1860 Light Cavalry Saber, the type most commonly used by Union and Confederate soldiers.
Sources
House Executive Document No. 67, 37th Congress, 2nd Session, U.S. Congressional Serial Set No. 1131, House Executive Documents, Vol. 5, Pt. 1, March 5, 1862; Instructions for Making Quarterly Returns of Ordnance and Ordnance Stores (1863); The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, Part III, Vol. II: Surgical History (1883); The Ordnance Manual for the Use of the Officers of the United States Army (1861); United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records 129 vols. (Washington, 1880–1901), Series III, Vols. 2–5.
Related topics: weapons
