Death of a Pale Horse

In the 19th century, horses were the backbone of warfare in North America. Glanders, a deadly disease of horses, was known to contemporary soldiers and strategists as a plague on their campaigns, but the true impact of glanders on American military efforts, particularly in the Seminole and Civil Wars, can be determined only with a modern understanding of the disease’s progression and transmission in the peculiar spatial arrangements of war. By examining horses as messengers, porters, scouts, and, in dire circumstances, sources of food, the author juxtaposes their centrality to the operations of war with their high mortality rates, giving new urgency to accounts of horse shortages and scarcity. And fundamentally, the article shows how the spatial arrangement into which horses were corralled, similar to human army camps in the extreme, created conditions that allowed glanders to emerge and spread.