This veteran’s badge uses a miniature Spencer carbine with a pin back to suspend a looped brass wire holding a blue swallowtail flag, with a pair of crossed sabers in white metal pinned to it. It follows the lines of the corps badge adopted by Wilson’s Cavalry Corps in June 1865, but in using a blue flag the maker fell back on the conventional method of indicating divisions by color rather than using Wilson’s more complicated system of numbers for divisions and color combinations for brigades, likely a matter of cost for the maker. Perhaps to give his purchasers some choice, though, he also violated Wilson’s initial preference for having the badge use only a red flag, the symbol of the corps as a whole, for the sake of unity.

The corps made its reputation in March and April 1865 as Wilson led three divisions, numbering something over 10,000 men, all or many armed with Spencer carbines on a raid into Alabama and Georgia. The main target was Selma, with an arsenal, powder mill, gun making facilities, railroad repair shop, etc., but they destroyed various iron works along the way, skirmishing off and on and defeating  Forrest at Montevallo and Ebenezer Church, and finally at Selma. From there Wilson moved on to Montgomery and into Georgia, with engagements at West Point and Columbus, eventually taking Macon just a week before Johnston’s surrender.   [sr] [ph:m]

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