Active service was harder on horses than it was on the men who rode them. Department commanders relied heavily on their mounted regiments, and cavalry troopers spent far more time in the field than did infantrymen. Hard service, poor forage, dilapidated stables, novice riders and too few veterinary surgeons all helped wear out cavalry horses. These problems were common to all the Regular mounted regiments.

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Horse-purchasing boards in each geographical department convened to appraise animals that were offered for sale as Army remounts. A typical board included one officer from each of the cavalry regiments in the department (the 4th and 10th cavalries, for instance, first in Texas and later in Arizona Territory) and an officer from the Quartermaster Department. The Army did not set out to cripple one-fifth of its mounted force by assigning poor horses to the 9th and 10th cavalries. Throughout most of the post–Civil War era, these regiments served in some of the most active departments, and a few of their companies took part in some of the most dramatic actions of those years–at Beecher Island in 1868, at Milk Creek in 1879 and at Drexel Mission in 1890. If there had been a policy of assigning them second-class mounts, the black troopers would not have been able to venture far from their forts.

The War Department tried to provide enough horses for the cavalry, but often lacked the money to buy them. In 1871 the Quartermaster Department told Colonel Hatch to purchase 218 remounts for the 9th Cavalry, but warned him not to spend more than $100 each. Usually, though, the horses sent to the 9th and 10th cavalries were fit, and at least no worse than those of white regiments. The black regiments drew poor horses, shoddy supplies, or unenviable assignments from time to time, but it was the result of Army-wide policies — or, more often, short budgets — rather than racial prejudice.

When manifestations of prejudice interfered with Army policies, the War Department took action. Congress established the grade of post commissary sergeant in 1873, to help the lieutenants who were usually assigned to keep track of the beans, coffee, flour and other foodstuffs and the beef cattle herd at each Army post. The first two successful applicants from the black regiments were not appointed commissary sergeant until 1879. Five years later, the general order announcing the grade of post quartermaster sergeant–to help the lieutenants in charge of equipment, housing, transportation and uniforms — provided for 80 of the new sergeants, ‘two from each regiment, provided there are fit applicants … who deserve the position.’ By the end of the 1880s, 10 men from the black regiments were serving as staff sergeants of one kind or another. The size of the understrength Army and the scope of its responsibilities in the West precluded any official policy that might have created and maintained a separate corps of second-class soldiers. Armed and equipped, clothed, fed, housed and paid the same as whites, black soldiers proved themselves able to perform the same duties as those required of any men in the service.

The War Department could do little about informal slights and insults, though, whether they came from officers or civilians. An anonymous letter writer, who claimed to be a 24th Infantry sergeant at Fort Davis, reported the officers there ‘calling the Soldiers Dam Black negros’ in 1871. Eight years later, when 9th Cavalry troopers told an Army inspector that Captain Ambrose Hooker called them ‘damned negro sons of bitches,’ Hooker denied making any ‘distinction on account of race or color,’ but went on to tell the inspector that he meant to teach his men the ‘great difference between soldiers in the United States Army and cornfield niggers.’ The inspector thought that Hooker was a poor choice to command black troops, but found no grounds for disciplinary action against him.

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