Thrilling Days in Army Life

General Forsyth U. S. A. 1837-1915 was a United States military officer who served in the cavalry during the American Civil War and the Plains Indian Wars of 1870 to 1890.

Forsyth was born in Pennsylvania, and enlisted as a private in a 3 month regiment, Barker's Company, Chicago Volunteer Dragoons, on April 19, 1861, mustering out on August 18, 1861. He then was commissioned 1st lieutenant in the 8th Illinois Cavalry in 1861, followed by promotions to captain in 1862, and major in 1863.

He saw action in all major campaigns fought by the Army of the Potomac. In the Shenandoah Valley, he served as aide-de-camp of Major General Philip Sheridan and received a brevet promotion to colonel on October 19, 1864, for his service at Sheridan's famous "20 mile ride to Winchester to turn defeat into victory" at the battles of Third Winchester and Cedar Creek. He was breveted brigadier general of volunteers in 1865.

After the Civil War ended, he received a commission in the regular army as a major in the 9th U.S. Cavalry in 1866. In 1868 Forsyth raised a band of 50 frontiersmen to serve as scouts into Indian territory. He led this group to victory at the Battle of Beecher Island against Roman Nose. For this action, he received a brevet to brigadier general.

Between 1869 and 1873 he served as military secretary to Lt. General Philip H. Sheridan and between 1878 and 1881 as Sheridan's aide-de-camp. In his permanent rank, he received a promotion to lieutenant colonel of the 4th U.S. Cavalry on June 26, 1881.

This book, "Thrilling Days in Army Life" details (4) of the leading incidents in Forysth's military career. First, is the Indian attack on Forsyth's detachment by Chief Roman Nose at Beecher Island mentioned above. Second, is his campaign against Apache raiders of the dreaded Chiricahua Apaches, most famous in the public mind for chief's Geronimo & Cochise. Third, is the famous Battle of Winchester in 1864 also mentioned above. Fourth, and last is his participation in the surrender of General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to General U. S. Grant which ended the Civil War.

An eye witness account, by a participant, to great events in American Military History.

There are approximately 45,100  words and approximately 150+ pages at 300 words per page in this e-book.

NOTE: This book has been scanned then OCR (Optical Character Recognition) has been applied to turn the scanned page images back into editable text. Then every effort has been made to correct typos, spelling, and to eliminate stray marks picked up by the OCR program. The original and/or extra period images, if any, were then placed in the appropriate place and, finally, the file was formatted for the e-book criteria of the site. This means that the text CAN be re-sized, searches performed, & bookmarks added, unlike some other e-books that are only scanned---errors, stray marks, and all.

We have added an Interactive Table of Contents & an Interactive List of Illustrations if any were present in the original. This means that the reader can click on the links in the Table of Contents or the List of Illustrations & be instantly transported to that chapter or illustration.

Our aim is to provide the reader AND the collector with long out-of-print (OOP) classic books at realistic prices. If you load your mobile device(s) with our books, not only will you have fingertip access to a large library of antiquarian and out-of-print material at reasonable prices, but you can mark them up electronically & always have them for immediate reference without worrying about damage or loss to expensive bound copies.

We will be adding to our titles regularly, look for our offerings on your favorite e-book site.