"In Horse Sweat and Powder Smoke Stanley S. McGowen describes and honors one of the most unusual and successful military units in Texas history. He provides the only complete history of the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment, documenting their origins from the Confederate Committee on Public Safety's request for mounted units to the appointment of Henry McCulloch to colonel of cavalry.".

"McGowen examines the regiment's experiences across the vast range of territory that the unit covered, including Louisiana swamps, the Red River Valley, along the Rio Grande, and the Gulf Coast. He discusses their involvement in the controversial campaign known as the Battle of the Nueces, casting doubts on the common interpretation of German immigrants, sympathetic to the Union, as defenseless farmers.

McGowen asserts that while there was bloodshed on both sides, the Germans were not the innocent victims that many historians have claimed and that the cavalry was not the blood-thirsty gang many thought."--BOOK JACKET.