This was proved, though the majority of Continental soldiers would never open their eyes to the fact, by the fighting in the American Civil War. Henderson, with clearer vision, writes of this great conflict: “So brilliant were the achievements of the Cavalry, Federal and Confederate, that in the minds of military students they have tended in a certain measure to obscure the work of the other arms.” No doubt many of these achievements were rather of a strategical than a tactical nature, but many were not. The American Cavalry was from first to last constantly used for actual fighting, and in numberless instances its value as a battle arm was amply demonstrated. It would be impossible to enumerate them here, but Henderson expressly declares, for example, that “there is no finer instance ... of effective intervention (by Cavalry) on the field of battle than Sheridan’s handling of his divisions, an incident most unaccountably overlooked by European tacticians, when Early’s army was broken into fragments, principally by the vigour of the Cavalry, in the valley of the Shenandoah.” The fact was that, adapting themselves to the new conditions brought about by rifled firearms, the Americans had created a mounted service which could fight both on foot and on horseback, with the rifle or the sword or the pistol; “they used fire and _l’arme blanche_ in the closest and most effective combination, against both Cavalry and Infantry.” Assuredly Cavalry was not yet a negligible arm in battle.