15th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment

15th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment
Pennsylvania flag
ActiveAugust 22. 1862 to June 21, 1865
CountryUnited States
AllegianceUnion
BranchCavalry
EngagementsBattle of Antietam
Battle of Stones River
Battle of Chickamauga
Commanders
Notable
commanders		Col. William Jackson Palmer
Private John E. Wildes of Co. B, 15th Pennsylvania, photographed by Oliver H. Willard
Union veteran Captain Wilmon Whilldin Blackmar of Co. K, 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment and Co. H, 1st West Virginia Cavalry Regiment, standing next to the chair in which General Ulysses S. Grant sat during General Robert E. Lee's surrender, presented to Blackmar by his friend and comrade Major General Henry Capehart. From the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regiment, known as the Anderson Cavalry and the 160th Volunteers, was a three-year cavalry regiment in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was recruited and formed in the summer of 1862 by officers and men of the Anderson Troop, an independent company of the Pennsylvania Volunteers that had been mustered the previous November.

Until the last three months of the war the 15th Pennsylvania Cavalry was an independent unit reporting directly to the headquarters of the Army of the Cumberland, performing escort, scouting, courier and other details for the commanding general. Composed of hand-picked men most of whom were qualified to receive commissions, it became the favorite unit of both Generals William S. Rosecrans and George H. Thomas.