Extracts from the ARMY LINEAGE SERIES

INFANTRY

Part I: Regular Army

by
John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh

OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF MILITARY HISTORY
UNITED STATES ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C.,1972

 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.

The number of men in all Regular companies was raised at once to the maximum authorized by law, that is, 84 enlisted men in the first ten regiments and 97 in the other nine. Even so, the regiments never reached full strength because they could not compete with the volunteers for enlistments. By December 1861, some 30,000 Regular infantrymen were authorized, but barely 11,000 enlisted, while during the same period 640,000 volunteers entered the service. The third battalions of the 12th, 13th, 14th, 17th, and 19th Infantry were never organized, and not all the companies were raised for the third battalions of the other four new regiments. In fact, the 11th, 12th, and 13th only imperfectly organized their second battalions. Each battalion of the new regiments designated its companies by letters beginning with A, so that, if fully raised, there were three A companies, three B companies, and so on in each regiment.

Since replacements came more slowly than losses to the Regular regiments, all of them grew smaller as the war continued. By July 1864, as an illustration, the 2d Infantry had shrunk to 7 officers and 38 enlisted men, who were, thereafter grouped into one company and assigned to guard duty. Moreover, by 1 November 1864 all the Regular outfits of the Army of the Potomac were so reduced that it was necessary to withdraw them from the field. Such shrinkage was, of course, not confined to the Regulars. The average strength of regiments most of which ought to have contained 1,046 officers and men-was as follows in the battles named:

The comments so far have referred mainly to Regulars, but this should not obscure the fact that most infantrymen were volunteers. These volunteers were members of regiments raised and officered by the several states. Initially President Lincoln called for thirty-nine such outfits, but before the war was over more than 1,700 volunteer regiments served. This was not far from one hundred times as many as there were units of Regulars. The three-battalion organization was not extended to the volunteers because the states, which raised them, were thought to be too much accustomed to the old system to change. As a result, the volunteer units, like the first ten Regular regiments, contained ten companies in one battalion.

These regiments were variously numbered and designated by the several states, but in practice came to be called merely the "8th Indiana" or the "45th New York." Although patterned after the old regiments in overall organization, the state regiments borrowed their company structure from the new, that is, they had ninety-seven enlisted men, instead of eighty-four, plus one wagoner whom the Regulars did not have. As matters were arranged, therefore, there were three different regimental organizations in the infantry. The volunteer regiments aggregated 1,046 officers and men; the 1st through the 10th Infantry, 878; and the 11th through the 19th, 2,367. Actually the battalions of the latter ought to be .compared with the old regiments, since they were designed to act independently and approximated the size of the others. They contained a few more than 800 enlisted men.

Even though most of the volunteer infantrymen were raised and officered by the states, a few hundred units were not. Several types of volunteers were more directly linked to the United States than to any state, the earliest of these being two regiments of U.S. Sharpshooters (1st and 2d) organized in 1861. These two contained companies from several states, raised by the states. Their origin in more than one state was an uncommon attribute, but their real distinguishing feature was the manner in which they were officered. While the states appointed the company and field officers in ordinary volunteer units, the Federal government appointed them in the Sharpshooters and similar outfits.

The next type appeared when large-scale acceptance of Negro troops began in 1863. A number of battalions had started as state units, but with the exception of two Massachusetts regiments, all Negro outfits were finally mustered directly into Federal service, and were organized and officered under the authority of the United States and not of any particular state. Known at first as the Corps d'Afrique and by other names, these units came to be called U.S. Colored Troops by the spring of 1864. Indian regiments (1st-4th Indian Home Guards) were handled in the same way. In all, there were 138 regiments of Negro infantry and 4 of Indians. Except for these two races, diverse nationalities could and did intermingle in infantry units, although men of German, Irish, and Scandinavian extraction proudly associated together in exclusive regiments.

Yet another type of Federal volunteer emerged because casualties had reached such proportions that provision for the incapacitated, and replacements for them, had become critical problems. To solve these problems, the Invalid Corps was established in April 1863 and classed as infantry. It was composed of men who in the line of duty had become physically unfit for combat. Those who could handle a gun and make light marches were put in the 1st Battalion and were used for guard duty. The worse crippled formed the 2d Battalion and were used as nurses and cooks around hospitals. Six companies from the 1st Battalion and four from the 2d made up a regiment in the Corps after September 1863. In all, 24 regiments and 188 separate companies of invalids did duty, thus releasing able-bodied soldiers for combat service. In March 1864-because the Corps' abbreviation, "IC," was confused with "Inspected Condemned"-the name was changed to Veteran Reserve Corps.

Finally, in 1864 six infantry regiments of U.S. Volunteers (1st-6th) were recruited for service on the frontiers (not against the Confederacy) from Confederate prisoners of war. Then in 1865, nine infantry regiments of U.S. Veteran Volunteers (1st-9th) were raised directly by the United States. Although all types of United States volunteers made up only a small fraction of the foot troops who served for the Union, they merit attention because of the intimate relationship between them and the Federal government, and because of the lack of vital connection between them and any state. This relationship foreshadowed the National Army of the twentieth century.

The Confederate Army arranged infantry units pretty much as the Union did, except that all regiments contained ten companies. Authorized company strength was 64 privates minimum and 125 maximum. Around 642 infantry regiments served at some time or another, along with 9 legions, 163 separate battalions, and 62 unattached companies. Many of the Confederate units were the forbears of Army National Guard elements existing today.

In the heat of the conflict, no changes were made in regimental organization, despite the fact that it was soon recognized as unsuitable. Improved firearms forced regiments and their companies to disperse to such an extent that officers could not effectively exercise control over them. Once .a regiment deployed, it was too big for one man and his staff to control. This fact helped to cause a high casualty rate among general officers, since the only way they could influence an assault, or rally a broken line, was to place themselves where everyone in the command could see them. At such times the enemy's sharpshooters saw them equally well.

Years after the Civil War, Maj. Gen. John M. Schofield, who had commanded the Army of the Ohio under Sherman, said that the cumbersome regimental organization had only worked in the course of the war because the replacement system was faulty. What he meant was that the unwieldy regiments at the beginning of the conflict dwindled through casualties until they reached a size which a colonel and his staff could handle. The same attrition, of course, applied to the control of companies.

Companies were also unwieldy yet were not reorganized. On the contrary, the promise of wide use of platoons, sections, and squads- a promise that may be detected in the infantry manuals of the 1850's- was not fulfilled during the war. As a result, notwithstanding the fact that the need was far greater, there were no more officers in an infantry company than there had been forty years before.

The reason why types of organization were retained that had been designed for use under different conditions stemmed from the great haste with which the armies were assembled in 1861. There was no time to make a wide canvass of professional soldiers, and those consulted were deceived by their belief that the conditions of the wars of Napoleon had not been radically modified. Few foresaw, and perhaps could not have foreseen, the full impact of the Minie ball upon warfare.

The keystone of the whole matter was the heightened firepower which the infantry had to face and which it could wield. The foot soldier's rifle musket, although a muzzle-loader, was vastly more effective than the weapons infantrymen had handled before 1855. It was accurate from 200 to 400 yards, and capable of killing at 800 to 1,000. Nor was it the only improved weapon. Scattered among the soldiers were many types of breech-loading repeating rifles which did great execution.

Except for being unwieldy, regiments and their components proved otherwise adaptable to wartime conditions. For example, heightened firepower more than ever before demanded skirmishers in front of the battle line. These the regimental organization was able to supply simply by assigning any of its companies to the duty. Likewise, regimental organization lent itself well to the attack formation which became characteristic of the Civil War. This was a succession of lines. Each line was composed of two ranks with a prescribed distance of thirty-two inches between them. Of course, the lines varied greatly in length and in the distance at which they followed each other. Some were as long as a whole brigade lined up in two ranks, others only as long as a company. If there was a usual length, it was that of a brigade, since attacks by divisions in column of brigades were most frequent. In any case, regiments as organized were easily utilized in that type of attack formation, as they were in others.

New means began to work during the Civil War to knit armies together and to speed their movements. For the first time, railroads were used extensively to move infantrymen to and from battle areas. This employment gave the foot soldier greater speed than he had in the past. In the field of communications, signal flags were first used. These enabled the parts of a force to keep contact with each other and to pass on information about the enemy. Newer still was the use of electricity, in the form of the telegraph, to link the components of a large force and to connect field elements with the Commander in Chief at Washington. The new modes of communication did not much improve the connection between units of the same army on the battlefield, but their indirect influence on the use of infantry was very great. The Signal Corps was constituted during the conflict to handle the new media of communication. Its service was great, but its relation to the infantry was only a tiny fragment of what it was to become in the future.

In conclusion it must be said that the Civil War occurred in one of those periods, common in history, when weapons outdistanced organization and tactics. It is true that deadly fire brought about modifications in the use of infantry, one of which was the use of a succession of lines in the assault, another the regular employment of temporary field works. But even after taking these into account, it .seems clear that the rifle musket was more modern than the organization of the infantry and the resultant formations used in the assault. Otherwise stated, organization and tactics were basically those of the beginning of the nineteenth century, while the weapons were fifty years more modern. This discrepancy between weapons and minor tactics accounts in part for the shocking destructiveness of the Civil War.