Story of a Cavalry Regiment; The Career of the Fourth Iowa Vetern Volunteers. By Wm. Forse Scott. Hard Cover, 602pp.

The Story of a Cavalry Regiment: The Career of the Fourth Iowa Veteran Volunteers From Kansas to Georgia 1861-1865

WM. Forse Scott

Some years ago, at the request of the survivors of my regiment, I undertook to prepare a sketch of its operations, to be read at a reunion. The character of the post I had held and my possession of a quantity of contemporaneous papers naturally suggested to them that I should do it. The result was a sketch which I thought too long for the purpose intended and too short to be of permanent value. So, finding my comrades much interested in the work, I set about extending it into a fuller account, still, however, with only slight mention of campaigns or co-operating commands (the usual plan of the regimental histories I have seen), intending to make a book for the gratification of the veterans alone.

But this plan proved unsatisfactory to me, because it could not present an adequate idea of the value of the work of the corps nor suggest an intelligent conception of the purposes of that work. Though survivors of the war may be able to fill out a narrow history from memory, or may imagine they can, their children and friends, who now make a greater number of the readers of such books, lack both of the old soldierís advantages of knowledge and imagination. These considerations, together with the hope, to which I confess, that the book might be of some value as contribution to the history of the war, led me to adopt the plan upon which finally I worked.

I have intended to give, with the operations of the regiment itself, a general and brief account of each campaign and action in which it was engaged and of the movements of the associated corps, such as would enable the reader to see, not merely what the regiment did, but how and why it was done. Though the result may be a history more or less broken, so far as the regiment alone is concerned, and at the same time only a meagre account of the campaigns as campaigns, yet I must take the risk of these objections. I think, upon the whole, that the plan I have chosen is better that any other. And I may add, lest it should seem presumptuous, my undertaking to write history, that very largely the book is really a record of what I saw and knew, since I was in the regiment from the first enlistments to the last muster-out, and was a part of nearly all its service.

It will not suprise me if my readers find minor errors. The work has all been done under serious difficulties as to time. Such irregular and uncertain hours as could be taken of evenings and holidays, in the midst of the engagements of an active professional life, are nearly all it has received. Though this does not excuse faults, I hope it may be received as an apology for them.

Yet I have tried carefully to confirm or correct every material statement by contemporaneous papers, official and private, by the printed official reports and other books, and by a large correspondence with the surviving actors. Officers and soldiers of all ranks, not only of my own command, but of many others, have aided me gladly and with great industry, so many, indeed, that I could not name them here in acknowledgement without making a list that would seem too long. But I must not omit to mention two gentlemen who, though having no part in any of the events of the book, have given me specially valuable help: Col. Ephraim C. Dawes, of Cincinnati, whose very remarkable library of the war I have freely used, and Major Joseph W. Kirkley, of the War Records Office, whose researches for me have supplied many gaps and settled many questions.

For the maps and battle-plans I am responsible alone, except the very excellent one of Selma, which was originally made by Captain Noyes, now Lieutenant-Colonel in the Fifth United States Cavalry. That one was verified, and those of Bear Creek, Briceís Crossroads, Big Blue, Marais des Cygnes, and Columbus, were sketched on the ground since war.