The 12th Cavalry · Company H against Forrest and the guerrillas

1864 – 1865

Company H was the county's cavalry company, and its war was the railroad war in Alabama: The 12th Indiana Cavalry was organized at Kendallville on 1 March 1864 under Colonel Edward Anderson. Its Company H was composed of men from St. Joseph County, under Captain Amos Dayhuff. Only six companies of the regiment were mounted at first — the rest were armed as infantry for want of cavalry arms until Louisville — and the regiment went to the defense of the railroad from Decatur to Point Rock, Alabama, sixty miles of line through country infested, in Chapman's words, with guerrillas and "bush-whackers." Companies C, D and H helped defend Huntsville against Forrest on 1 October 1864; the regiment fought at Wilkinson's Pike and Overall's Creek in the defense of Murfreesboro that December, and rode with Grierson's eight-hundred-mile raid through Alabama and Georgia to Columbus, Mississippi, arriving 28 May 1865. It mustered out at Vicksburg on 10 November 1865. Company H's loss was eleven men — five died from wounds, the remainder from disease; Chapman and Howard agree on the figure. Howard calls the 12th "the only cavalry organization in which St. Joseph county was represented," which is true at company strength: Chapman also lists individual county men in the 4th Cavalry, but no second county company was raised. Both statements stand, at their own sizes.

Sources:

1. Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), ch. VII, pp. 439–441 — Company H's muster from the adjutant general's report, its loss of eleven, and the regiment's railroad war.
2. Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), vol. 2 — the 12th as the county's only cavalry organization, read at company strength against Chapman's 4th Cavalry names.