A gripping account of the fighting between cavalry of the Union and Confederate armies at small-unit level. This book presents new insights on the role of cavalry in the age of massed infantry gunfire and is augmented, as usual, with stunning Osprey artwork.

During the intense, sprawling conflict that was the American Civil War, both Union and Confederate forces fielded substantial numbers of cavalry, which carried out the crucial tasks of reconnaissance, raiding, and conveying messages. The perception was that cavalry’s effectiveness on the battlefield would be drastically reduced in this age of improved infantry firearms.

This book, however, demonstrates how cavalry’s lethal combination of mobility and dismounted firepower meant it was still very much a force to be reckoned with in battle, and charts the swing in the qualitative difference of the cavalry forces fielded by the two sides as the war progressed.

Alongside stunning artwork, three fierce cavalry actions of the American Civil War are assessed, including the battles of Second Bull Run/Manassas (1862), Buckland Mills (1863) and Tom’s Brook (1864).

Ron Field is an internationally acknowledged expert on U.S. military history. Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1982, he taught History at Piedmont High School in California from 1982 to 1983, and was then Head of History at the Cotswold School in Bourton-on-the-Water, UK, until his retirement in 2007. In 2005 he was elected a Fellow of the Company of Military Historians, based in Washington, DC, and was awarded its Emerson Writing Award in 2013.

Peter Dennis was born in 1950. Inspired by contemporary magazines such as Look and Learn he studied illustration at Liverpool Art College. Peter has since contributed to hundreds of books, predominantly on historical subjects, including many Osprey titles.