Ironside (cavalry) Ironside (cavalry) The Ironsides were troopers in the Parliamentarian cavalry formed by English political leader Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century, during the English Civil War. The name came from "Old Ironsides", one of Cromwell's nicknames. Cromwell first mustered a troop of cavalry (then referred to as "horse") at Huntingdon in Huntingdonshire, on 29 August 1642, early in the Civil War. John Desborough was quartermaster. The troop was late in being organised, and arrived too late to participate in the Battle of Edgehill, the first pitched battle of the war. Cromwell however did witness the defeat of the Parliamentarian horse
Indiana in the American Civil War Battle of the Crater, where twenty-two of its men were killed. At the end of the war the regiment served in Texas, where it mustered out of service on November 8, 1865. The last casualty of the Civil War was a Hoosier serving in the 34th Regiment Indiana Infantry. Private John J. Williams died at the Battle of Palmetto Ranch on May 13, 1865. Hoosiers voted in favor of the Republicans in 1860, and in January 1861, Indiana's newly elected lieutenant governor, Oliver P. Morton, became governor after Henry Smith Lane resigned from the office to take a vacant seat