History of the Organization of the Infantry
The Era of Revolution
When Congress, on 14 June 1775, moved to take
over the New England Army then besieging Boston as a Continental
establishment, it also authorized ten companies of riflemen to be raised
in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia as part of the new Continental
Army. The next day, Congress appointed George Washington its Commander
in Chief. Before leaving their home state, the six rifle companies from
Pennsylvania were combined to form William Thompson's Rifle Battalion.
This battalion and the other new rifle units organized rapidly and
marched quickly to Boston.
The New England Army around Boston was
composed of citizen soldiers. From the earliest times that type of
soldier (male members of the community aged 18-45) had been required to
associate in military organizations called "militia," and to train to
defend his own locality. The militia system amounted to universal
military training for men of active ages, but it was for local defense
almost entirely. What is more, its enforcement rested altogether with
the colonies. At the outbreak of the Revolution, all the colonies had
military organizations operating, but their effectiveness was, in many
cases, slight. It was the general ineffectiveness of the militia system,
coupled with the need for centralized control, that brought about the
creation of the Continental Army. Even so, on account of the militia,
the colonies were able to utilize the experience of many veterans of
England's colonial wars, familiar with the British Army and with the
Indian modes of fighting it. These veterans were a very valuable asset.
In addition to the rifle units and the
besieging army, Congress later authorized the raising and maintaining of
Continental infantry battalions in the southern states. By December 1775
there were forty-nine infantry battalions (or regiments, for the two
terms were virtually synonymous) and several unattached companies in the
establishment.
The Continental Congress took the bulk of the
army besieging Boston in 1775 as it found it. Since most of the units
were enlisted only for the calendar year, General Washington had either
to attempt to re-enlist the soldiers already in service or to assemble a
new army. During the fall of 1775, he strove to retain the Continental
troops for the duration .of the war, but was only successful in keeping
part of them, and those for just one more year. A canvass of the
officers of thirtynine regiments in November showed that 751 officers
were willing to continue their service for one year while 406 were not.
The legislators set the size of the army
around Boston at 20,372 officers and men, to be organized into
twenty-seven regiments and some separate companies. In this scheme New
England, which had supplied forty-two in 1775, provided twenty-six
Continental regiments in 1776. These twenty-six were numbered from the
2d through the 27th. They were designated Continental infantry in an
attempt to transfer the men's loyalty from the states to the Congress.
The 1st Continental did not come from New
England, but was built around the nine companies of riflemen then in
William Thompson's Pennsylvania Rifle Battalion. Six of those companies
were among the original units of the Continental Army, while the other
three joined up later. All lost their specialization as rifle companies
and the "regiment" became a standard element of the line.
Diverse units entered the Continental service,
until by December 1776 there were eighty-two battalions of foot soldiers
in all. During the year 1776 the following new units of battalion size
were added to the establishment:
John Haslet's Delaware Regiment
James Livingston's Regiment, known as the 1st
Canadian.
Moses Hazen's Regiment; known as the 2d
Canadian, also as Congress' Own.
(The two Canadian regiments contained about
equal numbers of Canadians and New Englanders, but in January 1781 all
foreigners in the service were transferred to Hazen's.)
Seth Warner's Regiment, officered by men who
had participated in the invasion of Canada in 1775 and filled in part by
Green Mountain Boys.
Samuel Miles' Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment
2d-12th Pennsylvania
1st-3d Georgia
1st-3d New Jersey
1st-9th Virginia
William Smallwood's Maryland Regiment
Charles Burrall's Connecticut Regiment
Samuel Elmore's Connecticut Regiment
Andrew Ward's Connecticut Regiment
The German Battalion
Their officers were appointed by Congress upon
the recommendation of the Commander in Chief.
Late in 1776 it was once again necessary to
cope with the dissolution of the army, but this time Congress took a new
tack. It attempted to create a force to serve "during the present war."
The legislators, observing the size of the army in being, set the new
establishment at eighty-eight battalions, and apportioned these among
all the states, so that Massachusetts had to provide the greatest
number, fifteen, and Delaware and Georgia the smallest, one apiece. The
eighty-eight battalions thus authorized were raised, equipped, and
officered by the states. They were no longer known by Continental
numbers, but carried instead numbers in the several state organizations.
These state organizations were called "lines," the term used then for
the regular infantry or "foot" that made up the line of battle of an
army. The state lines together comprised the Continental Line. These
should not be confused with the occasional state regiments which were
raised on a permanent basis for local service only.
Although the regiments of the several states,
arranged in the Continental Line, replaced the numbered regiments of
1776 (for example, the 9th Continental of 1776 became the 1st Regiment
of the Rhode Island Line in 1777) , the change was mostly one of name.
The relationship of regiments to states remained about as it had been,
and the appointment of officers continued to be in practice a
collaboration between Congress, the Commander in Chief, and the states.
Some of the Continental regiments became units in the state lines, while
the men and officers of others transferred to the new regiments of 1777
without carrying the lineages of their 1776 outfits with them. The
reorganization of the winter of 1776 did not radically alter the way men
came into the Continental service or the manner in which regiments were
organized, but it did place responsibility for procurement, replacement,
and supply more squarely upon the states. This stimulated an increased
effort in some states: for example, Massachusetts and Connecticut
(although later overruled by Congress) voted to supplement the
Continental pay of their lines.
In December 1776, while the reorganization of
the American. Army was taking place, the British advanced into New.
Jersey. Faced with this threat, Congress authorized Washington to add
sixteen purely Continental battalions .to the foot establishment. This
action resulted in part from the fact that the states had been
unutterably slow in supplying their quotas for the eighty-eight line
battalions. The term of service of the new sixteen was the same as that
of the state lines, for three years or for the duration, but the
similarity ended there. Washington raised them wherever he could, and
appointed all their officers himself. The new Continental regiments were
usually recruited within one state and, like all other units, had a hard
struggle to reach full strength.
The organization established late in 1776 and
early in 1777-containing as it did the state lines coupled with the
sixteen additional Continental battalions-was a compromise between two
needs. The first need was to utilize the powerful authority of the
states, without which the conflict could not be prosecuted; the second
was to have at least some regiments subject only to the will of the
Commander in Chief.
All regiments sent out their own recruiting
parties to prescribed areas, but to keep the fighting army up to
strength was almost an impossible job. In consequence, during 1780, when
the theater of war had moved south, Washington had not enough troops to
act against the enemy with the part of the army that he commanded in
person. Indeed, Congress found it necessary to consolidate the sixteen
additional Continentals with the state lines, and, at the same time, to
fuse the separate corps and the German Battalion into them too. More
important, the infantry of the entire Continental establishment was
reduced to fifty battalions by 1 January 1781. Such a reduction of the
infantry was not dictated by strategy. On the contrary, it was the
result of a grave failure, the failure to be able to maintain a larger
number of regiments.
As in previous years, new units appeared in
the roster of the Continental Army during the four years beginning with
1777. They were often the result of the reorganization of earlier
outfits. From various sources came the following units:
1st-15th Massachusetts
5th New York
1st-6th Maryland
4th New Jersey
7th-10th North Carolina
10th-15th Virginia
The Corps of Invalids
These regiments and those in the preceding
list made up the spine of the Army after 1776. They were not static;
indeed some of the early ones provided elements of the others. Moreover,
they supplied companies to special corps such as the legions of Henry
Lee and Casimir Pulaski and the Corps of Light Infantry.
An understanding of the internal organization
of the Continental infantry regiments and their components requires a
short explanation of infantry tactics in the eighteenth century. To
begin with, the heart of a battle as fought in western Europe was the
line of infantry. It was this line which had to be broken if victory
were to be won; hence the heavy fire of the artillery and the maneuvers
of the cavalry were chiefly directed against it. It was common in Europe
for the battle line to be formed on an open plain just outside of
effective artillery range of the enemy. This meant that the two lines
took their positions within 500 yards of each other, a distance at
which, with modern firearms, few men would be left standing. This is the
fact which makes it hardest for moderns to visualize early warfare. The
effective range of the musket of the period was not over 100 yards and
was often nearer 50. Fighting at such ranges, infantry organization was
founded upon the need to form the line, control it in battle, renew it
when decimated, and maneuver it so as to place the enemy at a
disadvantage. But this was not the beginning and the end of infantry
tactics, particularly in the rough, wooded terrain of North America.
In the colonial wars of the eighteenth
century, the need had grown for infantrymen to precede the battle line.
Their purpose was to screen the advance or retreat of their own main
body, to break up the power of the volley from the enemy's line, and
otherwise to soften that line for an assault with bayonets. Such an
assault commonly began at a distance of fifty yards or less from the
foe. As a result, one of two things took
place: either a savage hand-to-hand encounter,
or a collapse and retreat by one of the lines, In any case, the
infantrymen who moved out ahead of the line were trained to aim at
individuals, to protect themselves by using cover, and to operate with
an interval of several yards between them. They came to be called "light
infantry." In contrast to their action, the line fired by volley without
taking individual aim, remained standing unless ordered to do otherwise,
and advanced with the men in it actually elbow to elbow up to the moment
of the assault.
In the American service, as in the British,
battalions and regiments were usually one and the same. An English
regiment had ten companies in it, eight of them (the "battalion
companies") for the line, the other two for special uses. These were the
elite or "flank companies." One called the "grenadier company" was
composed of men picked for their strength acrd courage. As often as not
(for instance, at Bunker Hill) the grenadier companies were detached
from their regiments and used together in provisional grenadier
battalions. These were given the most difficult assignments, and the
posts of honor (that is, of greatest danger) if used in the battle line.
The tenth company in a British battalion was
called the "light company." Light companies were also detached and
consolidated into provisional battalions, but as often they were
assigned a truly light mission, that is, to advance ahead of the line,
screen it, and demoralize the enemy. This mission of light infantry in
the American service was usually performed by rifle units, which fanned
out in front of the army and, with their accurate fire, galled the enemy
severely.
At first there was no counterpart to flank
companies in the Continental infantry. Beginning in August 1777,
however, General Washington directed that 108 men and 9 officers be
drawn from each brigade and formed into a temporary Corps of Light
Infantry. When winter came this corps was disbanded, but. it had proved
so useful that Washington urged Congress to authorize one light company
for each battalion to be formed into a separate corps during every
campaign thereafter. It was with the Light Corps, which resulted, that
Anthony Wayne stormed Stony Point on 16 July 1779 in the most celebrated
night attack made by Americans during the Revolution.
Like the British Grenadiers, the American
Corps of Light Infantry became the elite body of the Army. Command was
eagerly sought in it by the most enterprising officers and places in the
ranks by the men. Although the Corps as a whole continued to be
disbanded each winter and raised afresh for every campaign, one light
company became permanent in each Continental battalion after mid-1780.
Prior to that time American battalions had contained only eight
companies, those of the line, so that the addition brought the total up
to nine, still one short of the British. The Corps of Light Infantry
received special training in the use of the bayonet. During July 1780 it
was put under the command of Lafayette, and made the chief American
assaults the following year upon the enemy's works at Yorktown.
One of the distinctive features about the
Revolutionary War was the use of rifles and rifle units in it. The rifle
was virtually unknown in the New England Army that opened the war.
Indeed, throughout the conflict, muskets were the armament of the troops
of the line. At 100 yards, the best musketeers could hit a man-sized
target only four shots out of every ten. In contrast, expert riflemen
could kill a man with every shot at 100 yards and do good execution at
twice that range. The chief limitations on the use of riflemen were the
scarcity of expert shots and the fact that the rifle could not carry a
bayonet. Although the latter deficiency was somewhat overcome through
the use of tomahawks and knives, riflemen remained vulnerable to a
determined bayonet attack. Accordingly, riflemen were not useful in the
line, but both sides made extensive use of them as sharpshooters ahead
of and around the main fighting force.
As already mentioned, the rifle companies from
Pennsylvania in William Thompson's Battalion soon lost their
specialization and became an element of the line, armed with muskets.
Nearly as short-lived as a rifle unit was the Maryland and Virginia
Rifle Regiment, composed of the original Continental rifle companies
from Maryland and Virginia plus some later ones from the same states.
This unit was captured at Fort Washington on 16 November 1776 and was
never re-formed. Just at the time of its capture, Daniel Morgan received
a commission as Colonel of the 11th Virginia. He recruited 118 riflemen
and joined the Continental Army with them at Morristown, New Jersey,
early in April 1777. Very soon Washington drew 500 picked riflemen from
the regiments of his Army and put them under Morgan's command. Thus
began the most famous of the rifle corps which persisted intermittently
throughout the Revolution.
Sometimes Washington referred to Morgan's unit
as a rifle corps, sometimes as "rangers." The latter term requires a
little elaboration. Rangers were a species of infantry that the British
had developed to cope with the methods of the French and Indians in
North America. They were scouts who ranged the forests spying upon the
enemy, gathering intelligence on his strength and intentions, and
harassing him when they could. Units of rangers had to be made up of men
who understood woodcraft and who could match the Indians in stealth.
Also, they had to be trained shots. Actually, corps like Daniel Morgan's
were rangers a good deal of the time. In addition, there were certain
units, such as Thomas Knowlton's Connecticut Rangers, which regularly
bore the title.
From time to time the size of Continental
units was fixed by resolve of the Congress. Thus during the
reorganization which took place at the end of 1775, regiments were
authorized to contain 728 officers and men, companies 78 enlisted men.
These strengths were much larger than the British counterparts which
were 477 and 38, respectively. Although Continental units always
exceeded equivalent British units in strength, they varied widely from
authorized size. For example, nine months after the first directive
appeared, some companies had 67 men in them, others 88. This was, of
course, the result of the unequal fall of casualties upon different
outfits and the variation in the effectiveness of the recruiting systems
of the several states. The Delaware Regiment illustrates a typical case
of shrinkage. It was so decimated after the battle of Camden in 1780
that it had to be combined with Maryland companies to form a regiment.
Later still, with the Maryland remnants, it was reorganized as a light
company, commanded by Robert Kirkwood.
In closing this section on the organization of
Continental infantry during the Revolutionary War, nothing should be
stressed more heavily than the confusion which chronically prevailed in
it. At all times Washington and his staff were obliged to improvise new
organizations from the remnants. of those that had been cut up in battle
or had served out their short terms and gone home. Moreover, at all
times it was also necessary to assimilate thousands of citizen soldiers
for brief periods into some sort of working team with the Continentals.
This had to be repeated over and over again with new increments because
militia terms of service were very short. The attempt to utilize the
militia, and put it into good enough order to be effective for at least
one campaign, was perhaps the hardest of the Commander in Chief's almost
insupportable duties.
In spite of its burdensomeness the effort was
well placed. Indeed, John W. Fortescue, historian of the British Army,
declared that the militia was the decisive factor. Be that as it may,
the militia formed around the Continental Army as a nucleus, and would
not have turned out had that often ragtag force not been in the field.
Most of the estimated 164,000 militiamen who took up arms for terms from
a day up to three months were infantry. In addition to them were other
infantrymen, raised and maintained on a relatively permanent basis by
the several states, who, with the militia, rallied on the Continentals
and abetted the cause.
When the British surrendered at Yorktown on 19
October 1781, there were sixty battalions of infantry in the Continental
establishment. Afterwards, as time passed and it appeared that the
British intended no new attack, that number was steadily reduced.
Finally, in November 1783, after a peace had been formally ratified,
only one foot regiment remained, commanded by Henry Jackson. Then, on 2
June 1784, the end came even for that unit, leaving as the only
authorized vestige of the Continental Army still in service fewer than a
hundred men to guard military stores at West Point and at Fort Pitt.
Through the Second War With England
Congress nevertheless realized the need for at
least enough infantry to replace Jackson's regiment. Accordingly, the
day after the latter was directed to be discharged, the legislators
established a regiment which was to be raised and officered by obtaining
volunteers from the militia of four of the states. This nonRegular unit,
called the First American Regiment and commanded until 1 January 1792 by
Josiah Harmar of Pennsylvania, gradually turned into a Regular outfit.
It became known as the 1st Infantry in 1791, and in 1815 was
redesignated as the 3d Infantry. From 1784 to 1787 Harmar's regiment was
a hybrid, containing eight companies of infantry and two of artillery.
Although England was a constant threat to the
new nation after the War for Independence, the Indians presented the
most immediate menace. Accordingly, the First American Regiment was
stationed on the frontier. In October 1790, the Miami Indians and their
allies defeated the first field army, commanded by Harmar, to be
organized by the government of the United States acting under the
Constitution. This defeat caused the raising of another regiment of
infantry in 1791, and the numbering of the old one as the 1st and the
new one as the 2d. As a result of the radical reorganization after the
War of 1812, the latter became the 1st Infantry.
Serious trouble with the Indians of the
Northwest continued; indeed, in the very year the 2d Infantry was
organized, the Miamis defeated the second force sent by the Federal
government against them. The army defeated in 1791, led by Arthur St.
Clair, consisted of the Regular establishment augmented by militia and a
new species of foot troops known as levies. Goaded by defeats, Congress
gradually increased the military establishment from 700 men in 1784 to
5,104 in 1793. As the size of the entire Army increased, so did the
strength of the infantry elements. Regiments rose from 560 to 1,140
enlisted men, companies from 70 to 95. Regiment and battalion remained
one and the same.
Two beatings inflicted by the Northwest
Indians brought about an experiment in organization which had precedents
in certain European corps and in some of the Continental Army. The
entire military establishment was converted in 1792 into a legion, that
is, into a field army in which the three combat branches, infantry,
cavalry, and artillery, were combined in the same organization. The
legion consisted of four sublegions. Each sub-legion contained infantry,
riflemen, cavalry, and artillery; indeed it was the forerunner of the
twentieth century regimental combat team.
Although Congress had authorized a total of
five regiments on 5 March 1792, when the Legion of the United States
came into being, none but the 1st and 2d Infantry were actually
organized. Hence it was necessary to go out and recruit infantry for the
3d and 4th Sub-Legions. Likewise it was necessary to recruit the rifle
units for all the sub-legions.
Command of the new Legion fell to Anthony
Wayne, who had been a successful leader of light troops during the
Revolution. Wayne did not employ the sublegions as such to any important
extent; on the contrary, he combined the infantry from all of them,
likewise the artillery, and so forth. However, he instituted so stern a
system of discipline that he forged an army which, in 1794, finally beat
the Indians of the Northwest and defied the power of England which had
fostered Indian unrest.
Once the threat in that quarter was reduced,
the need to hold a field army together seemed to diminish. What was
needed instead, statesmen believed, was an organization which could
easily be split up and parcelled out to guard the frontiers and the
seacoast. As long as Henry Knox remained Secretary of War, the legionary
form had a stout champion, but he left office at the end of 1794. The
Legion persisted for another year and a half, then went out of existence
by act of Congress effective 31 October 1796. In the new establishment
the infantry of the four sublegions became the 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th
Infantry.
Peace promised to prevail, so that during 1796
and 1797 the entire Army was reduced, and the size of regiments and
companies as well. For scattered use, a large complement of officers and
small companies filled the bill.
All too soon the sense of security evaporated
as war loomed with France. In consequence, the establishment swelled
precipitately, and the strength of units with it. By 1799 a total of
forty infantry regiments was authorized, although none but the 1st
through the 4th ever attained the required strength. Only 3,400 men were
raised for the 5th through the 16th, and none at all for any others.
Fortunately, the war with France never took shape; by 1800 the crisis
was over and the immediate need for more infantry gone. In addition, a
new administration took office in 1801, an administration that almost
pathologically feared a standing army. Accordingly, under Thomas
Jefferson the infantry was cut back in 1802 to two regiments, the 1st
and 2d.
Jefferson's administration had only a brief
chance to test its convictions regarding a strong militia and a small
standing army, for war clouds were gathering once more. The United
States almost began the second war with England when the British warship
Leopard attacked the American Chesapeake in 1807. This aggression caused
Congress to add five Regular infantry regiments in 1808, the 3d through
the 7th, and also to constitute the Regiment of Riflemen. The latter was
a product of the Revolutionary experience and the first rifle unit since
the end of the Legion in 1796. Rifle elements re-entered the service
through the agency of Brig. Gen. James Wilkinson, commanding the army,
and Henry Dearborn, Secretary of War, both of whom had had firsthand
experience with them in the last war.
Aside from the augmentation of April 1808
there was no further preparation for a fight until just six months
before the second war with England. At that time, that is, in January
1812, Congress constituted ten new regiments of Regular infantry. The
act of 11 January 1812 which created them was remarkable in at least two
ways: first, it provided for the largest regiments and battalions
authorized in the United States before the Civil War and, second, it
established an organization that was at variance with the seven existing
regiments. As a result, in the first six months of 1812 there were three
different-sized infantry regiments, besides one of riflemen. The 1st and
2d regiments made up the infantry of the "military peace establishment,"
and they had ten companies in them of seventy-six enlisted men. The 3d
through the 7th regiments, authorized in 1808, were called the infantry
of the "additional force," and comprised ten companies with two more
officers and two more enlisted men each than the 1st and 2d had. The 8th
through the 17th in no way resembled the others, for they had eighteen
companies of 110 enlisted men, arranged in two battalions.
Although some of the bulky eighteen-company
regiments were raised, several never acquired their second battalions.
Recruiting was so difficult that they lacked the time to raise many men
before Congress voted a fresh reorganization. Late in June 1812, the
legislators changed the law. According to the new arrangement there were
to be twenty-five regiments of infantry, exclusive of the rifle
regiment, each containing ten companies of 102 men. Thus all the
infantry regiments were made uniform on paper, and a standard of
organization was established that persisted throughout the conflict.
This standard was more often than not honored in the breach. Once
constituted, all the twenty-five regiments organized and recruited
actively, but during the first two years of the struggle their efforts
brought in less than half of the total number of infantrymen authorized.
Regulars at first could only enlist for five
years, but late in 1812 newcomers were given a chance to enroll "during
the war." All the while the states competed with the Federal government
for soldiers, and the shorter "hitches" they offered drew men into their
service. To combat this Congress directed the creation, in January 1813,
of twenty new infantry regiments enlisted for just one year. Nineteen of
them were raised and designated as the 26th through the 44th Infantry.
Later, they were converted into long-term outfits (five years or the
duration) , but all the units constituted after 1811 had men in them
enlisted for different terms. For example, there were in a single
regiment one-year regulars, eighteenmonth men, three- and five-year men,
and some in for "during the war."
Early in 1814 four more infantry regiments and
three more regiments of riflemen were constituted. Finally, therefore,
forty-eight infantry regiments, numbered from the 1st to the 48th, came
into being, plus four rifle regiments, the 1st through the 4th. This was
the greatest number of infantry units included in the Regular Army until
the world wars of the twentieth century. A mighty effort was made in
1814 to raise the Army to strength, and nearly 27,000 men came in, but
in spite of this, four of the regiments had to be consolidated because
they were too small. The 17th, 19th, 26th, and 27th were joined to form
a new 17th and a new 19th, while the two highest numbered, the 47th and
48th, were redesignated the 27th and 26th, respectively.
No sooner was war over than Congress scrambled
to rid itself of its more than 30,000 infantrymen. An act of 3 March
1815 set the peace establishment at 10,000 men, divided among infantry,
rifle; and artillery regiments. Cavalry was eliminated, and eight
infantry regiments and one rifle regiment arose from the ruins of the
forty-six and four in existence. The rifles were consolidated and the
infantry, after many rearrangements, settled as follows:
1st Infantry formed by consolidation of the
2d, 3d, 7th, and 44th
2d Infantry formed by consolidation of the
6th, 16th, 22d, 23d, and 32d
3d Infantry formed by consolidation of the
1st, 5th, 17th, 19th, and 28th
4th Infantry formed by consolidation of the
14th, 18th, 20th, 36th, and 38th
5th Infantry formed by consolidation of the
4th, 9th, 13th, 21st, 40th, and 46th
6th Infantry formed by consolidation of the
11th, 25th, 27th, 29th, and 37th
7th Infantry formed by consolidation of the
8th, 24th, and 39th
8th Infantry formed by consolidation of the
10th and 12th
The eight remaining infantry regiments were
smaller than their war predecessors because, although the number of
companies in each remained at ten, every company contained 78 men
instead of 103. There was no effort to preserve the honors or
traditional numbers of any of ,the prewar regiments. The 1st was merged
with other regiments and redesignated the 3d, and the old 2d, 3d, 4th,
5th, 6th, and 7th were likewise lost in the remains of disbanded
regiments. The new numbers were founded on the seniority of the
colonels, the senior colonel commanding the 1st, and so forth. As a
consequence of the reduction, 25,000 infantrymen were separated from the
service. Another consequence was that the form of the infantry
establishment was set roughly for the next thirty years. Not until the
Mexican War, thirty-one years later, was it substantially expanded.
The Germinal Period., 1816-1860
After the reorganization of 1815, the Regular
infantry fluctuated in size with the whole military establishment.
Prospects of peace appeared to improve, and in 1821 Congress felt safe
enough to cut expenses by disbanding the Rifle Regiment and the 8th
Infantry. Having reduced the infantry establishment to seven foot
regiments, which were thought adequate to meet all contingencies, the
legislators next sliced the size of companies to fifty-one enlisted men,
the smallest ever. This arrangement endured for fifteen years when, as
usual, the Indians forced an enlargement.
At all times there was trouble with the
Indians on the frontier, but two affairs assumed the magnitude of war.
The first in 1831 and 1832 against the tribes of the Iowa, Illinois, and
Wisconsin area, known as the Black Hawk War, was easily won by a force
composed mostly of militia. The whole affair had no permanent impact on
the Regular infantry. Not so the second of the several scraps against
the Seminole Indians in Florida, which began in December 1835 and lasted
until 1842. Volunteers and militia bore the brunt of the Florida War at
first, but Regulars gradually replaced them. As a result, after more
than two years of inconclusive fighting, Congress was obliged to augment
the Regular infantry (in 1838) by adding thirty-eight privates and one
sergeant to each company, and by raising a new 8th Infantry, the fourth
unit to go by that number. At one time or another, every one of the
eight regiments of infantry served in the Florida swamps.
As quickly as the war in Florida was over in
1842, although all were retained, regiments and companies were reduced
to minimum size. However, by a fluke, the Regular infantry actually
increased. This came about because in the spring of 1843, to save money,
the 2d Dragoons were converted into a rifle regiment. They thus became
the first rifle corps included in the establishment for two decades,
that is, since the Rifle Regiment had been disbanded in 1821. The
erstwhile horsemen, who felt degraded on foot, clung hard to their
dragoon organization, but they received rifles and, as far as is known,
trained as riflemen. Agitation to remount them was continuous, and
within a year they became the 2d Dragoons again. When they were
reconverted, rifle corps disappeared once more from the Army, except
that the President received authority from Congress to convert two or
more infantry regiments into rifles if he thought it expedient. He never
exercised this authority. .
In May 1846 a new rifle unit, the Regiment of
Mounted Riflemen, was constituted. This regiment had initially been
designated for use on the Oregon Trail but was diverted at its origin
into Mexican War service. Its animals were lost on the way, so only two
companies, mounted on Mexican horses, acted as cavalry. The rest, armed
with Model 1941 rifles, bayonets, and flintlock pistols, fought on foot.
At the start of the Mexican War, Congress
tried to get along with just eight infantry regiments of Regulars, but
in doing so gave the President power to expand their companies to one
hundred enlisted men during the war. Ten months after hostilities
commenced, it was necessary to change this policy and add nine new
regiments-with the same organization as the old ones-to the Regular
infantry. Eight of them, as was customary, bore numbers, the 9th through
the 16th; but the other got a name. It was called the Regiment of
Voltigeurs and Foot Riflemen. Half of this unit was to be mounted, the
other half on foot, and each horseman was paired with a foot soldier who
was to get up behind him for rapid movements. This arrangement was never
executed, and the Voltigeurs became in fact a regiment of foot riflemen,
armed with the same rifle (a muzzle-loader) as the Mounted Riflemen.
Quite by chance, the regiment included a company of mountain howitzers
and war rockets, but it was not linked with the riflemen tactically, nor
were the rockets and howitzers ever used together.
Although raised as Regulars, the nine new
infantry regiments created during the Mexican War were disbanded when
the war was over. Their dissolution left a peace establishment of eight
foot regiments. This structure seemed less adequate than it would have
before 1846, for "Manifest Destiny" had entered the reckoning of the
legislators. The inescapable need to protect, at least partially, the
vast area taken from Mexico, and to help settlers across the great
plains to California and Oregon, caused Congress to add the 9th and 10th
Infantry in 1855, the fourth of both numbers in United States service.
The ten regiments in existence after 1855, the 1st through the 10th,
made tip the foot establishment until after the actual opening of
hostilities in 1861. The Regiment of Mounted Riflemen remained active
after the Mexican War, but in 1861 it was redesignated as the 3d
Cavalry.
The new 9th and 10th Infantry organized in
1855 were the first infantry units to receive rifle muskets instead of
smoothbores as their standard arm. The rifle issued to them was built to
utilize a new type of ammunition, known as Minie bullets. Because these
conoidal bullets expanded when fired, they could be made small enough to
be rammed easily down the barrel of a rifle. When the propellant
exploded, the ball expanded into the rifling which imparted to it the
spin that made rifle fire superior to that of muskets. The principle
implicit in the Minie bullet worked a true revolution in the use of
small arms by enabling accurate rifles to replace inaccurate muskets as
standard firearms for the infantry.
A regiment of ten companies-with regiment and
battalion one and the same-was standard throughout the period. For
training and for battle purposes, the eight battalion companies were
placed in line by a complex arrangement according to the seniority of
their captains, which seems to have had its origin in the protocol of
medieval armies. It had no functional basis, since once lined up, the
companies were renumbered from right to left. For official designation,
however, a new system began in 1816. Under this system the companies
were known by letters, instead of by numbers or by the names of their
commanders. The two flank companies received the letters A and B, and
the others C through K. There was no Company J, because J was too easily
confused with I in writing.
At this point it is necessary to remember that
there had been only one flank company per battalion during the
Revolution. The addition of a second company had occurred in 1798 when
war with France seemed certain. Its adoption brought the American
battalion into conformity with those of England and France, the
potential European foes. But whereas their flank companies received
special weapons, those in the United States infantry did not. As a
result, the latter had less chance to develop techniques apart from the
line. They were simply composed of men picked for their strength and
courage.
The truth is that conditions in America did
not favor the specialization of particular companies. Indian wars had to
be fought by whatever troops were available; there was no time to await
the arrival of elite corps, whether called grenadiers or something else.
Nor did fights with Indians give much opportunity for infantry to assume
the formal line of battle with light units out front. Finally, the
scattering of the companies of Regular regiments made specialized
training impossible.
Nevertheless, the drill manuals of the United
States infantry after 1825 called the two flank units grenadier and
light infantry companies. The latter term had some application, the
former none at all. The acceptance of European designations resulted
from the dominance of French military arrangements throughout the world
in the decades after the wars of Napoleon. More specifically, it came
from the fact that American drill manuals were in reality translations,
only slightly modified, of French regulations.
It was during this epoch that Americans
borrowed a verb from the French to describe the operations of light
flank companies. That verb was "to skirmish." It grew in use and
importance because the extended order of light or skirmishing infantry
was very slowly challenging the tighter formations of the line. In the
United States the challenge had not proceeded far at the time of the
Mexican War. Rather, it was the introduction of the Minie ball, and
other advances in firearms, which in the fifties forced infantry all
over the world toward wider use of skirmish tactics. The trend was to
give all infantrymen training as skirmishers. As a result, the Tactics
adopted in 1855 discarded the distinction in name among the ten
companies of a battalion. All ten took their places in line, and all
were prepared, when called on, to move ahead of the line and skirmish
with the foe.
In the Mexican War, light battalions of
Regulars were often formed for specific missions by temporarily
detaching companies-not necessarily the flank ones-from different
regiments. Composite battalions of this sort usually did not do as well
in battle as established ones, in which men and officers understood each
other and regimental pride was an active stimulant. There was, however,
more distinction between flank and line in volunteer regiments. Two
companies out of ten were specifically organized as light and given a
choice between rifles and muskets. The flank rifle companies which
resulted were often detached from their regiments and used together for
'special sharpshooting assignments. This was the case in the fighting on
the mountains to the left of the American position at Buena Vista.
Throughout this period there was a growing
emphasis on the use of segments within a company. This emphasis resulted
from the increase in the power of firearms which followed adoption of
the Minie principle and the extensive experiments under way on repeating
and breech-loading rifles. In order to offset the mounting vitality of
firepower, professional soldiers began to stress dispersion in the
official drill manuals. Dispersion, of course, strained the ability of
officers to control large bodies of men, and consequently highlighted
the need to organize smaller elements within units. Applied to a
company, this meant an increased use of platoons (half companies) ,
sections (half platoons) , and the beginning of the fighting squad.
The earliest suggestion of the squad was a
file of two men, the two being taught to stick together during a fight.
Later, for purposes of training, squads gradually changed from being
irregular knots of men, in the drill manual of 1815, to being specified
fractions of a company in 1841. The latter were to be quartered and
exercised together. There was no expansion of their use in combat until
1855 when the new manual prescribed "Comrades in Battle" (two files,
totaling four men) who were to work together in battle.
There is another point about this period which
deserves emphasis: the frequency with which the other two combat arms
served as infantry. In the Florida War, artillery fought on foot and
dragoons did likewise more often than not. During the Mexican War, the
bulk of the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen fought on foot and only ten
artillery companies had cannon, while the other thirty-eight served as
infantry. They carried musketoons instead of muskets, and swords instead
of bayonets; but they were trained for infantry service, and made an
impressive record fighting as such.
Under the provisions of the Constitution, the
United States received complete control of the Regular Army-the
descendant of the Continental Army-but not of the militia. Most of the
power over the latter remained with the states, and the extent to which
the Federal government could use state militias became a matter of
endless controversy. Worse by far, from the standpoint of efficiency,
was the fact that militiamen could only be held to serve for three
months and that they were not liable to do duty very far from home. What
is more, militia training differed widely from state to state, so that
it was hard to fuse units from the several states into one army.
When obliged to wage war as a nation, the
United States was caught between the fear of a standing army and the
inadequacies of a militia controlled by the several states. Some sort of
compromise was necessary, and that proved to be an old type, volunteer
soldiers organized into provisional wartime regiments. There were also
peacetime volunteers- quite distinct from those raised for a war- at
hand in the militia.
In the large seaboard cities there were
independent or chartered companies of citizen soldiers apart from the
common or standing militia. They were composed of men who liked military
exercise well enough to buy their own uniforms, drill regularly, and
hold together in peace as well as war. These units usually received
charters from the states, and they very soon constituted an elite corps.
This corps became the parent of the National Guard of the twentieth
century. The title "Volunteers" with a capital V was applied to them
early in the nineteenth century, and it is used here to distinguish them
from individuals or units who volunteered only for the duration of a
given war.
Volunteer infantrymen, when associated with
the compulsory militia, took the posts of honor and their units were
consequently often referred to as flank or light companies. Sometimes
they had special weapons and actually trained as light infantry. When
war came they sometimes volunteered to go as units or they became a
relatively trained cadre around which some provisional regiment was
built. By the 1850's, the standing militia had deteriorated so far, and
the Volunteers had become so stable, that many of the states abandoned
the idea of compulsory service, and accepted the Volunteers as their
constitutional militia. This done, they began to organize the scattered
companies into battalions and regiments, a grouping that was well
advanced in some states in the decade of the 1850's.
Volunteers were supposed to be organized and
to train according to the discipline of the Regular infantry, but this
was rarely the case. The Tactics of the Army were not widely enough
disseminated, and were too voluminous for general use by the state
militias anyway. As a result, Volunteers and militia used whatever
manuals they could come by, which ranged from Steuben's Regulations of
1779 to the latest translations of the French system.
In the Mexican War, most volunteers reached
the seat of war with little or no training; but some of them, once
arrived, were associated with Regular brigades and quickly introduced to
the Army drill. Like the training, the organization of citizen soldiers
of all types was required by law to conform to the United States'
standards, but much latitude existed. The Maryland and District of
Columbia Battalion of the Mexican War, for example, reached the combat
area with only one field officer of the three required in the Regular
service. Also, the size of regiments at that time varied from 923 on the
under side of the Federal standard of 1,004 enlisted men, to 1,423, on
the upper. In general, the Volunteers of the cities came closest to
adhering to U.S. standards, both for training and for organization.
The wide use of militiamen and volunteers
carried with it an inevitable flabbiness in discipline. Citizens
temporarily turned soldiers had no sense of unquestioning obedience to
anyone and were usually not in service long enough to acquire more than
a shade of it. Moreover, they almost always elected their own officers,
which did not make for stern authority.
Frequently, the lack of training and of
discipline resulted in rout in battle, as happened on part of the field
at Buena Vista. On the other hand, citizen soldiers often showed
remarkable fighting ability, as was true, for example, of the
Mississippi Rifles, commanded by Jefferson Davis, on another part of the
same battlefield. In all instances, training and leadership were the
ingredients that made the difference. Lack of training caused trouble
less often in combat than in the intervals between, when life grew very
dull. It must be remembered that a hitch in wartime was a lark for many
a citizen, during which he left his inhibitions at home. Citizen
soldiers made relations with the people of Mexico difficult because, as
General Zachary Taylor said, ". . . it is impossible effectually to
control these troops [for they lose] in bodies the restraining sense of
individual responsibility."
Whatever the quality of U.S. Army foot troops,
figures show quite well the change that was taking place in their source
during wars. Nine out of ten infantrymen in the War of 1812 were
militiamen. Only one out of ten foot soldiers was a militiaman in the
Mexican War; three were Regulars, and six were war volunteers. This
trend continued until the adoption of conscription in the twentieth
century. The point to stress is that infantry doctrine and standards
were set by the Regulars, but the mass of American infantrymen in
wartime were citizen soldiers.
The Civil War
The infantry, both North and South, was far
from ready for war in 1861. There were but ten Union foot regiments, and
they were largely in the West, scattered by companies over thousands of
miles. Until assembled, which would take time, they could be counted on
for very little. Many of the Regular officers, the core of any
expansion, had served in the Mexican War fifteen years before, but few
had commanded any sizable body of troops. Moreover, although a small
number had kept abreast of world military developments after their
services in Mexico, they were not in a position to dictate policy in
Washington.
To add to the problems of the infantry early
in the war, virtually no preparations had been made, apparently because
statesmen hoped until the last minute that conflict could be averted.
They believed that military adjustments would damage the chances of
peaceful compromise. Thus, when war began, the foundations of what was
to become a huge infantry establishment had to be commenced hastily and
without real planning.
Since Congress was not in session, President
Lincoln began the war buildup in May 1861 with a proclamation of
doubtful constitutionality. On the strength of his executive authority,
he summoned thirty-nine regiments of volunteer infantry and one of
cavalry to serve for three years. His next step was to authorize an
addition of eight infantry regiments to the Regular Army. Somehow a
ninth got included. Thereafter, the nineteen regiments in being- the 1st
through the 19th- were the whole of the Regular infantry during the war.
So neglected a part of the whole establishment were these nineteen that
they were never able to attain their full authorized strength.
Prior to issuing his call, the President
consulted the War Department as to the best. organization for the new
Regular units. The Secretary of War, being overburdened, turned the
matter over to Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, and loaned
him three officers as technical advisors. The result was a
recommendation in favor of the French structure. This included regiments
of three battalions instead of one. Two battalions were supposed to take
the field, the third to maintain a regimental depot for collecting and
training recruits. Battalions of 800 men in eight companies were adopted
as the most efficient fighting units because they were thought to be
small enough to maneuver and to be controlled by the voice of the
commanding officer, yet large enough to withstand attack by cavalry.
A battalion in the French system was the
fighting unit, a regiment the unit of administration. The French felt
that a regimental headquarters could administer more than one battalion,
an arrangement which appealed to Americans because it eliminated some
field officers and thus saved money. The new three-battalion
organization, however, was not extended to the ten old regiments, which
continued to comprise ten companies each, with regiment and battalion
one and the same. The men in authority felt that there was no time to
bother with reorganizing outfits already extant, when so many remained
to be organized from scratch. Furthermore, the old, single-battalion
regiment was hallowed by age and tradition. This meant that two
different regimental organizations were tolerated in the Regular
infantry, a dualism that might have caused much confusion had the
Regular regiments loomed larger than they did in the whole infantry
establishment.
Recommend Products
Copyright (C) amityauction.net 2024. All Rights Reserved.
|