approximately 2,500 men. Presumably divisional strength would vary, for the law prescribed no set number of brigades in a division.[1]
As implemented, the militia divisions and brigades were generally paper organizations. Congress provided neither federal supervision nor effective support for them. Furthermore, no provision was made for a militia force that would be available immediately to react in an emergency. Although ineffectual, the system lasted for over one hundred years. In practice, when the federal government called upon the militia, the president asked for a specific number of men from a state and the state organized them into regiments.
Shortly after Congress passed the militia law, it authorized the use of volunteers, a third category of soldiers, for national defense. Volunteers served freely, like soldiers in the Regular Army, but they were not part of any standing or reserve force. Generally, the states raised the volunteers that Congress considered necessary on a regimental basis, and the federal government used the volunteer regiments to form divisions and brigades.[2]
The Regular Army also experimented with the legion as a combined arms unit in the 1790s. Differing from the legions employed during the Revolutionary War, the Legion of the United States resembled the organizations described by Marshal Maurice de Saxe in 1732 and advocated in the 1780s by Maj. Gen. Frederick Wilhelm von Steuben, formerly the Inspector General of the Continental Army, and Secretary of War Henry Knox. The legion was a field army, combining infantry, cavalry, and artillery into one organization, which totaled 5,120 men. Rather than being subdivided into divisions, brigades, and regiments, the legion consisted of four sublegions, which some consider to be the forerunners of the regimental combat teams of the twentieth century. The Regular Army adopted the legion in 1792, but it was never fully manned. For the campaigns against the Miami Indians in the Northwest Territory between January 1790 and August 1795 the Army employed militia and volunteer units and the Legion of the United States. Its sublegions, however, were not employed extensively. The Army abandoned the legion in 1796 for regimental organizations. Henceforth, the regulars were scattered throughout the country, guarding its frontiers and seacoast and rarely forming organizations above the regimental level.[3]
War of 1812
When the second war with England began in 1812, Congress raised forces by expanding the Regular Army, authorizing the use of volunteers, and calling out the militia. In raising the troops both the federal and state governments used regimental organizations, and the Army organized these regiments into ad hoc brigades and divisions, which varied widely in strength. For example, Brig. Gen. Joseph Bloomfield's New York militia brigade assigned to Maj. Gen. Henry Dearborn's force in 1813 counted 1,400 strong; Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott's Regular brigade in 1814 before the Battle of Chippewa fielded 1,300 men; and the Pennsylvania vol-
- ↑ Ford, JCC, 3 Jun 1784; John F. Callan, comp., The Military Laws of the United States (Philadelphia: G.W. Childs, 1863), pp. 95–100.
- ↑ Callan, Military Laws, pp. 122–25, This was the first law authorizing volunteers; the other laws concerning them were enacted during periods of crises. Those printed in this volume cover the period until 1863.
- ↑ Maurice de Saxe, Reveries on the Art of War, trans,, Thomas R. Philipps (Harrisburg, Pa.; Military Service Publishing Co., 1944), pp. 36–38; Frederick Wilhelm von Steuben, A Letter on the Subject of an Established Militia, and Military Arrangements, Addressed to the Inhabitants of the United States (New York: J. McLean and Co., 1784), p, 45, Henry Knox, A Plan for the General Arrangement of the Militia of the United States (1786), published in Political Pamphlets, Jefferson Collection, Library of Congress; John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh, Infantry. Part l: Regular Army (Washington, D.C: Government Printing Office, 1972), pp. 12–13; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army From lts Organization, September 1779 to March 2, 1903, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1903), 1:139–41; Francis Paul Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United Army on the Frontier, 1783–1846 (Bloomington; Indiana University Press, 1977), pp. 17–24.
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