4th Michigan Volunteer Cavalry Regiment

4th Regiment Michigan Volunteer Cavalry
Michigan state flag
Active	August 28, 1862, to July 1, 1865
Country	United States
Allegiance	Union
Branch	Cavalry

4th Michigan Cavalry was a regiment of cavalry in the Union Army during the American Civil War fighting in the western front as part of the Army of the Cumberland. It was noted as being the regiment that captured the fleeing President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, as the Confederacy collapsed in the spring of 1865.

The regiment was organized at Detroit, Michigan, and mustered in on August 29, 1862, under the command of Colonel Robert Horatio George Minty of Jackson, Michigan, Lieutenant Colonel of the 3rd Michigan Cavalry Division.

Regimental staff included Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Dudley Pritchard of Allegan, Michigan, Major Josiah B. Park of Ovid, Major William H. Dickinson of Grand Rapids, Major Horace Gray of Grosse Ile, Surgeon George W. Fish of Flint, Assistant Surgeon John H. Bacon of Lansing, Adjutant Joseph W. Huston of Paw Paw, Quartermaster Walter C. Arthur of Detroit, Quartermaster Chauncey C. Douglass of Grand Rapids and Commissary Edwin H. Porter of Kalamazoo.

Among the men who served in the 4th Michigan Cavalry was James Vernor, Sr., who after the war became a well known pharmacist and the developer of Vernor's Ginger Ale. Another early recruit was future Michigan politician Levi T. Griffin.

After training and drilling, it left the state with an enrolment of 1,233 officers and men on September 26, 1862, for duty in Louisville, Kentucky. It saw its first engagement at Stanford Kentucky, fighting the forces of Confederate General John Morgan, attached to the 1st Brigade, Cavalry Division, Army of the Ohio until November 1862. Other assignments during the war included:

The 4th Michigan Cavalry fought alongside the 7th Pennsylvania Cavalry, the 4th United States Cavalry and the Chicago Board of Trade Battery as part of Colonel Minty's Sabre Brigade for much of the war. These units fought at Murfreeboro, Stones River, Shelbyville, Reed's Bridge, Chickamauga, Noonday Creek, Atlanta, Kilpatrick Raid and Selma.