Background of the Arkansas Regiment

President James K. Polk called upon Arkansas to provide 10 companies (or one regiment) to send to Mexico. Arkansas supplied men for cavalry companies, although they were actually called “mounted gunmen” and not cavalry. A typical Arkansas company included 78 men: one captain, one first lieutenant, one second lieutenant, four sergeants, four corporals, two buglers, one farrier (someone who shoes horses), and 64 privates. Mounted gunmen provided their own horses and wore civilian clothes at the beginning of the war; they did not receive official uniforms until much later.