Infantry, Part I: Regular Army / The Germinal Period, 1816-1860

by John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh

• 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 2nd 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 2nd 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 3rd 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.