Daily Inspiration Quote by John Buford

It reads like modest politicking, but it’s really a battlefield résumé compressed into one careful sentence. Buford isn’t thumping his chest; he’s staking a claim in the most acceptable 19th-century way: by speaking in the imagined voice of “the regulars.” The phrasing shifts ambition onto the troops’ supposed preference, turning a bid for command into an act of deference. That’s not coyness. It’s professional survival in an officer corps where reputation, seniority, and patronage mattered, and where overt self-promotion could look like vanity or insubordination.

The key word is “regulars.” Buford is distinguishing the U.S. Army’s career soldiers from the volunteer regiments that flooded the Civil War. Regulars prized discipline, competence, and predictability; volunteers often carried local politics and uneven training. By invoking the regulars’ vote, he signals that he speaks their language: drill, standards, and hard competence rather than charisma. It’s a coded assertion that he can weld disparate cavalry elements into something coherent.

The context sharpens the edge. Cavalry in the early war was still finding its role, and commanders were being tested brutally by logistics, terrain, and the fog of reconnaissance. Buford built a reputation for calm judgment and tactical realism (the sort of officer who understood what ground could buy you and what it would cost). The sentence is a quiet argument that war isn’t won by the flashiest horseman, but by the commander regular soldiers trust when everything goes sideways. In that sense, it’s less a request than a warning: choose competence, or pay for it later.