Infantry, Part I: Regular Army / The Civil War

by John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh

• 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 2nd 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:

1. Shiloh  :(6-7 April 1862) :560
2. Fair Oaks  :(31 May-1 June 1862) :650
3. Chancellorsville:(1-5 May 1863) :530
4. Gettysburg  :(1-3 July 1863) :375
5. Chickamauga  :(19-20 September 1863):440
6. Wilderness  :(5-7 May 1864) :440

• 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 ninetyseven 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 2nd) 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 2nd Battalion and were used as nurses and cooks around hospitals. Six companies from the 1st Battalion and four from the 2nd 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 "InspectedCondemned"-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.

Notes

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