Silent Cavalry

How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta--and Then Got Written Out of History

A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist reveals the little-known story of the Union soldiers from Alabama who played a decisive role in the Civil War, and how they were scrubbed from the history books.

“It is my sincere hope that this compelling and submerged history is integrated into our understanding of our nation, and allows us to embrace new heroes of the past.”—Imani Perry, professor, Harvard University, and National Book Award–winning author of South to America

We all know how the Civil War was won: Courageous Yankees triumphed over the South. But is there more to the story?

As Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Howell Raines shows, it was not only soldiers from northern states who helped General William Tecumseh Sherman burn Atlanta to the ground but also an unsung regiment of 2,066 Alabamian yeoman farmers—including at least one member of Raines’s own family.

Called the First Alabama Cavalry, U.S.A., this regiment of mountain Unionists, which included sixteen formerly enslaved Black men, was the point of the spear that Sherman drove through the heart of the Confederacy. The famed general hailed their skills and courage. So why don’t we know anything about them?

Silent Cavalry is part epic American history, part family saga, and part scholarly detective story. Drawing on the lore of his native Alabama and investigative skills honed by six decades in journalism, Raines brings to light a conspiracy that sought to undermine the accomplishments of these renegade southerners—a key component of the Lost Cause effort to restore glory to white southerners after the war, even at the cost of the truth.

In this important new contribution to our understanding of the Civil War and its legacy, Raines tells the thrilling tale of the formation of the First Alabama while exposing the tangled web of how its wartime accomplishments were silenced, implicating everyone from a former Confederate general to a gaggle of Lost Cause historians in the Ivy League and a sanctimonious former keeper of the Alabama state archives. By reversing the erasure of the First Alabama, Silent Cavalry is a testament to the immense power of historians to destroy as well as to redeem.

The details.

The detective work is almost unbelievable. Thank you to the author for his unstoppable journey to the true history of the service of the First Alabama Cavalry.

Mr. Raines is not a racist. Big deal

I thought the book would be about the actual cavalry. Instead, it is a tribute to Mr. Raines enlightened family regarding their racial tolerance in Alabama. As an Alabamian, I can attest to the malignant racism that blighted our state for over a 150 years or more. Many of us grew up with a similar aborrhence to racism that surrounded us in Birmingham and throughout the state. Mr. Raines does have an impressive family tree of anti-racists. So if you want to read about that, buy this book.
The narrator does a good job on this autobiographical pat on the back written by Mr. Raines.

A book I am adding to my Alabama History shelf

The reader is an excellent reader/actor. I have listened to his presentation three times and enjoyed every chapter.
I bought the hard copy as well.
I arrived in Birmingham the year after the author was born, and lived on the Southside. Listening to the book reminded me of sitting on the porch being read to.

splendid

Finally something positive and human about the state of Alabama. thank you. to date, nothing but the grotesque fills the ears and minds of the greater public about this state, which is odd because us northerners also hear about how "nice" southern folks are. it's great to hear a story about those in Alabama who loved the United States so much that they were willing to fight for what she believed in at its inception - that all men are endowed with unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Enlightening and captivating

I'm not a Civil War history buff... I'm a social historian for the late 18th, turn of the 19th centuries in the US. But I've been surrounded by friends and associates who are steeped in the Civil War, in one fashion or another, and who eagerly bought their copies of Ken Burns' miniseries, going on to sing the praises of Shelby Foot. When I watched the series, it always seemed to be just a bit black&white, not unlike America: The Story of Us. Mr. Raines' book is rather satisfying in that it explains those little gaps of the conflict and era that seemed to be stepped over in Burns' film. There is also, given the cult of political upheaval we're seeing today, elucidating information that makes it clearer as to what is unfolding today, particularly with the conservative south and why they support certain policies and people. This book is well worth the "read".