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5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment

cavalry regiment

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ17017513 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 5th Regiment Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry (or 5th Regiment, Massachusetts Cavalry (Colored)) was a cavalry regiment from Massachusetts, that served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. It was the third regiment to recruit black soldiers in Massachusetts, after the famous 54th and 55th regiments.

Service

The regiment was organized from January 9-May 5, 1864, at Camp Meigs, Readville, near Boston. Battalion moved to Washington, D. C., May 5-8, 1864. Regiment moved to Fort Monroe, Va., thence to City Point, Va., May 13-16. Attached to Rand's Provisional Brigade, 18th Army Corps, Dept. of Virginia and North Carolina, May, 1864. From May 12, 1864, it served dismounted and equipped as infantry until the end of war.

Assigned to Brig. Gen.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment” is cavalry regiment. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Massachusetts, Cavalry and Regiment, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1864—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1864-01-01. For this dossier, Massachusetts, Cavalry and Regiment is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “cavalry regiment” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17017513. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow 5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment primary sources, 5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment archive and Massachusetts research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “5th Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.