3. The Fourth and Fifth regiments had
been recruited under a previous call.

To show how little things often change the course of men's lives, an
incident of personal experience is here related. The Fifth Michigan
cavalry was recruited under the title of "Copeland's Mounted Riflemen."
One of the most picturesque figures in America before the war was John
C. Fremont, known as "The Pathfinder," whose "Narrative," in the
fifties, was read by boys with the same avidity that they displayed in
the perusal of the "Arabian Nights." Fremont had a regiment of "Mounted
Riflemen" in the Mexican war, though it served in California, and the
youthful imagination of those days idealized it into a corps d'elite,
as it idealized the Mexican war veterans, Marion's men, or the Old
Guard of Napoleon Bonaparte. The name had a certain fascination which
entwined it around the memory, and when flaming posters appeared on the
walls, announcing that Captain Gardner, of the village of Muir, was
raising a company of "Mounted Riflemen" for Copeland's regiment, four
young men, myself being one of them, hired a livery team and drove to
that modest country four-corners to enlist. The "captain" handed us a
telegram from Detroit saying that the regiment was full and his company
could not be accepted. The boys drove back with heavy hearts at the lost
opportunity. That is how it happened that I was not a private in the
Fifth Michigan cavalry instead of a captain in the Sixth when I went
out, for, in a few days from that time, Mr. Kellogg authorized me to
raise a troop, a commission as captain being conditional on my being in
camp with a minimum number of men, within fifteen days from the date of
the appointment.

The conditions were complied with. Two of the other boys became captains
in the Sixth Michigan cavalry; the other went out as sergeant-major of
the Twenty-first Michigan infantry and arose in good time to be a
captain in his regiment.

The government, during the earlier period of the war, was slow to
recognize the importance of the cavalry arm of the service. It was
expensive to maintain, and the policy of General Scott and his
successors was to get along with as small a force of mounted men as
possible, and these to be used mostly for escort duty and for orderlies
around the various infantry headquarters. There was, consequently, in
the cavalry very little of what is known as "esprit de corps." In the
South, the opposite policy prevailed. At t