Historical effectiveness of cavalry raids?

[aaminoff]

The best strategy games cause you to stop and think about historical events in a new perspective. So after reading the following thread over in the strategy section:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=4254

I am wondering, how effective were cavalry raids? How effective could they have been as a mid 19th century form of strategic warfare? If they could have been effective, why were they not used more?

It seems clear that most of the cavalry raids one reads about were *operational* rather than strategic in intent. The CSA never sent a cavalry brigade or division to try to take e.g. Baltimore or Philadelphia and burn it, or at least the heavy industry, to the ground. The cases where a cavalry force rode all the way around the enemy army, the intent seems to have been to disrupt their supply lines, often in conjunction with a major battle.

There was also railroad destruction, but it does not seem to have exerted a decisive tactical or operational influence.

Hypothesis 1: cavalry raiding as strategic warfare simply was not effective, and would not have been even if pursued more. The arguments are similar to those about strategic bombing in WW2; simply that the enemy country is big, and you cannot destroy a large enough portion of their infrastructure to make a significant impact.

Hypothesis 2: deep cavalry raiding was not practical. The whole point of using cavalry to raid is their advantage in speed - they can hit one place, then be gone before the enemy can bring in troops to catch them. However, in the age of telegraph and railroads, that advantage disappears at the operational level. Militia may not be able to catch the cavalry at the tactical scale, but if the cav is raiding in hostile territory, the militia can be entrained and sent to the cavalry's likely next target.

Hypothesis 3: strategic raiding would have been effective, but both sides chose not to employ strategic warfare until the late stages of the war, by a sort of gentleman's agreement that targeting civilians was not kosher. Both sides also wanted to keep public and political opinion, both in their own and the enemy area. One might imagine the South nixing a plan to raid to Baltimore on the theory that it was a hot-bed of pro-Southern political sentiment in the north.

The North, with naval supremacy, had the ability to land at any point on the coast at any time. They could have instituted a campaign of naval raids, where they might land a brigade of marines near a minor city, come in and torch the place, and then retreat back to the fleet before southern land forces could concentrate. This would differ from their actual strategy of taking and holding a few strategic coastal forts and cities in that it would have required much fewer troops in the long run. However they did not do so. Why not? Perhaps for similar reasons as my hypotheses above.

Does anyone know? Can anyone recommend some good sources about cavalry raiding in the ACW?

[Jabberwock]

There was also railroad destruction, but it does not seem to have exerted a decisive tactical or operational influence.

Read Shelby Foote on Buell's campaign towards Chattanooga. There are two main arguments why Buell was so slow.

1. (Traditional argument) He was just slow. He liked (re)building railroads, and was in no hurry to get his army anywhere.

2. (Foote's argument) He had major logistical problems. These were caused by two factors:
A. There was a drought. Very little supply was available from forage; and the level of the Tennessee River fell, so that he couldn't use it as an avenue for supply.
B. Cavalry raiders thoroughly disrupted the rail network from Kentucky through southern Tennessee; so he couldn't use that as an effective avenue for supply.

I would say that summer of 1862, in addition to being the high-water mark for the Confederacy as a whole, was the high-water mark for cavalry raiding. After that, both sides got more effective at dealing with it.

[LSSpam]

Concerning deep calvary raids. It occured once, in practice. Morgan actually crossed the Ohio and just about made it all the way over to Pennsylvania. Wiki has a decent article on it

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan%27s_Raid

So that's a pretty good start in terms of reading about how feasible it was.