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| Cavalry at Sudley's ford Bull Run Not until the time this photograph was taken--March, 1862--did the Union cavalrymen revisit this little ford after the disastrous rout of the inchoate Federal army the July previous. The following March, the Confederate commander Johnston left his works at Centerville for the Peninsula, having learned that McClellan's move on Richmond would take that direction. This group of cavalrymen is advancing across the stream near the ford where they had so gallantly protected the Federal flight only a few months before. At the time this was taken, the Federal Government had already changed its first absurd decision to limit its cavalry to six regiments of regulars, and from the various States were pouring in the regiments that finally enabled the Union cavalry to outnumber and outwear the exhausted Southern horse in 1864 and 1865. |
