Perhaps one of the most famous colored calvary units ever is the 5th Regiment colored cavalry .  Their most famous battle and the most devastating of all was probably the battle of Saltville, Virginia where there was an alleged to be a massacre of wounded black troops.
   When the Confederates saw that the advancing troops where black they became enraged at the "...sight of  their homeland being threatened by armed negroes."

The Saltville Massacre
 by Thomas A. Mays 

   In his book Mays claims that there on the night of the battle Confederate troops killed almost all captive and wounded negro cavalry soldiers.  118 of the 400 5th USCC ( U.S. Colored Cavalry) who took part in the battle were killed , wounded , or missing.  In May's book are the eyewitness accounts of many soldiers on both sides of the war.

   George Mosgrove of the 4th Kentucky Cavalry reported that the morning after the battle he heard firing . Thinking that the Union had mounted another attack he saddled his horse and rode cautiously to the front-line where he reported seeing  "Tennesseeans killing negroes.... hearing more firing at the front, I cautiously rode forward and came across a squad of  Tennesseeans , mad and excited to the first degree.  They were shooting every wounded negro they could find. Hearing firing on other parts of the field , I knew the same awful work was going on all around me."

     Mosgrove was appalled , yet admitted it would have been futile for him to try to stop it.  Mosgrove added , "Some were so slightly wounded that they could run , but when they ran from the muzzle of one pistol they were only to be confronted by another."  Mosgrove also wrote that he found seven or eight wounded blacks lined up against the wall of a cabin.  Mosgrove recalls stepping into the room just ".....as a pistol shot from the door caused me to turn around and observe a boy , not more than sixteen years old with a pistol in each hand."  Mosgrove told the boy to hold his while he jumped out of the way.  He then added " in less time than I can write , the boy shot every negro in the room."

     Capt. Orange Sells of the 12th Ohio Cavalry was also reportedly at the cabin. May writes that Sells "saw a good many Negroes killed there". All of them were soldiers and all were wounded but one. I heard firing there all over the place, it was like a skirmish.

      Confederate Capt. Edwin O. Guerrant recorded in his diary that "the continual singing of the rifles, sung the death knell of many poor Negro who was unfortunate enough not to be killed yesterday. Our men took no prisoners. Great numbers of them [Black soldiers] were killed yesterday and today".

      Mays retells the testimony of Private Harry Shocker, a wounded prisoner attached to the 12th Ohio Cavalry, who claims to have witnessed the massacre. Shocker "watched in horror as a Confederate guerilla the notorious Champ Ferguson, calmly walked about the battlefield killing white prisoners as well as black".