The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Civil War

Regular Army 

Before the 

Civil W r

the

1845 – 1860
CMH Pub 75–1

Cover: Detail from The Recall by Don Troiani (Historical Image Bank)
by

Clayton R. Newell

Center of Military History

United States Army

Washington, D.C., 2014

Regular Army 

Before the 

Civil W r

The

1845 – 1860

5

Introduction

Although over one hundred fifty years have passed since the 

start of the American Civil War, that titanic conflict continues to 

matter. The forces unleashed by that war were immensely destructive because of the significant issues involved: the existence of the 

Union, the end of slavery, and the very future of the nation. The 

war remains our most contentious, and our bloodiest, with over 

six hundred thousand killed in the course of the four-year struggle. 

Most civil wars do not spring up overnight, and the American 

Civil War was no exception. The seeds of the conflict were sown 

in the earliest days of the republic’s founding, primarily over the 

existence of slavery and the slave trade. Although no conflict can 

begin without the conscious decisions of those engaged in the 

debates at that moment, in the end, there was simply no way to 

paper over the division of the country into two camps: one that 

was dominated by slavery and the other that sought first to limit 

its spread and then to abolish it. Our nation was indeed “half slave 

and half free,” and that could not stand. 

Regardless of the factors tearing the nation asunder, the 

soldiers on each side of the struggle went to war for personal 

reasons: looking for adventure, being caught up in the passions 

and emotions of their peers, believing in the Union, favoring 

states’ rights, or even justifying the simple schoolyard dynamic 

of being convinced that they were “worth” three of the soldiers 

on the other side. Nor can we overlook the factor that some went 

to war to prove their manhood. This has been, and continues 

to be, a key dynamic in understanding combat and the profession of arms. Soldiers join for many reasons but often stay in the 

fight because of their comrades and because they do not want to 

seem like cowards. Sometimes issues of national impact shrink 

to nothing in the intensely personal world of cannon shell and 

minié ball.

Whatever the reasons, the struggle was long and costly and 

only culminated with the conquest of the rebellious Confederacy, 
6 

the preservation of the Union, and the end of slavery. These 

campaign pamphlets on the American Civil War, prepared in 

commemoration of our national sacrifices, seek to remember 

that war and honor those in the United States Army who died to 

preserve the Union and free the slaves as well as to tell the story of 

those American soldiers who fought for the Confederacy despite 

the inherently flawed nature of their cause. The Civil War was our 

greatest struggle and continues to deserve our deep study and 

contemplation.

 RICHARD W. STEWART

 Chief Historian
7

The Regular Army Before 

the Civil War, 1845–1860

The fifteen years that preceded the outbreak of the American 

Civil War were eventful ones for the U.S. Army. After invading 

and defeating Mexico, the Army dispersed across the vast Western 

frontier undertaking a myriad of duties. It subdued American 

Indian tribes, explored and governed new territories, and generally 

worked to maintain peace. At the same time, it supported national 

development through mapping and engineering projects, grew in 

size, and undertook important steps toward modernization. While 

these activities did not fully prepare the Army for the cataclysm 

that was to come, they did provide opportunities for officers to 

hone their leadership skills under trying conditions. Many of the 

men who would become generals during the Civil War first tasted 

battle as junior officers in Mexico and the American West. 

The United States Army in 1845

The United States Army in the early nineteenth century was a 

modest institution. Concerns over economy and the threat that a 

large Army might pose to liberty led many Americans to regard the 

Army as a necessary evil at best. Fortunately, the relative security 

afforded by vast oceans and sparsely populated neighbors created 

a situation in which the United States could survive with a small 

military establishment. By 1845, the United States had about 7,300 
8 

men under arms to protect a nation of nearly 20 million people 

and 1.8 million square miles of territory. In contrast, Belgium’s 

proximity to the great powers of Europe led that country of just 

over 4 million people and 12,000 square miles to maintain an army 

of about 30,000 men. Even Mexico, a nation of 7million people 

with whom the United States would soon be at war, maintained a 

regular army of over 18,000 men with another 10,000 militia on 

active duty. If Americans enjoyed relatively inexpensive security 

in peacetime, a disorderly and costly rush to mobilize the nation’s 

untapped financial and human resources would be the inevitable 

price for unpreparedness should the nation go to war. Such had 

been the case when America went to war with Great Britain in 

1812, and the upcoming war with Mexico would be no different.

Subsumed under the Department of War headed by a 

civilian secretary, the U.S. Army was divided into bureaucratic and combat elements. The bureaucratic side of the Army 

consisted of 259 staff officers, 17 military storekeepers, and 

about 450 enlisted men organized into nine staff departments or 

bureaus. Heading these bureaus were the Adjutant General, the 

Inspector General, the Paymaster General, the Quartermaster 

General, the Commissary General of Subsistence, the Surgeon 

General, the Chief of Ordnance, the Chief of Engineers, and the 

Chief of Topographical Engineers. These bureau chiefs oversaw 

the Army’s logistical and administrative affairs in fairly autonomous fashion. Although they reported to the secretary of war, 

the bureau chiefs were jealous of their prerogatives, enjoyed 

direct relationships with Congress, and tended therefore to be 

difficult to control. Also reporting to the secretary of war was a 

commanding general, whose exact role vis à vis the bureau chiefs 

was ambiguous and fraught with tension. As for the Army’s 

combat forces, these consisted of fourteen regiments—eight 

infantry, four artillery, and two dragoon. Underfunded, undermanned, and dispersed among many small and often remote 

outposts, the soldiers of the line lived and worked hard for meager 

pay. Few of the aging senior officers had a professional military 

education, while 30 percent of the enlisted ranks were illiterate. 

In a land bustling with economic opportunity, many Americans 

looked down on soldiers as shiftless individuals who donned the 

blue uniform either because they could not or would not engage 

in the industrious pursuits of normal society. Nevertheless, the 

rank and file were tough men, inured to the discipline and exacti-
9

tudes of Army life, and led by an increasingly professional officer 

corps because of the efforts of the U.S. Military Academy at West 

Point, New York.

The Mexican War

If many Americans did not hold regulars in high esteem, 

they recognized their utility when war appeared on the horizon 

in 1846 (Map 1). Tensions with Mexico started ten years earlier, 

in 1836, when Americans living in the Mexican state of Texas 

rebelled and formed an independent country, the Republic of 

Texas. Although the United States government did not intervene 

in the Texas Revolution, it recognized Texas’ independence and 

the boundary it claimed with Mexico along the Rio Grande River, 

neither of which were accepted by the Mexican government. 

Reflecting national sentiment that it was America’s “Manifest 

Destiny” to expand across the North American continent, 

the United States government eventually moved to annex the 

Republic of Texas in 1845. When the Texas legislature voted to 

join the United States in July of that year, President James K. Polk 

ordered Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor to advance into Texas as far as 

The American Soldier, 1836, by H. Charles McBarron 

(U.S. Army Art Collection)
6 Dec 1846

San Pascual

K E A R N Y

1 8 4 6

18 

Gila R

Colorado R

P A CIFIC

OCEAN

Boun

UPPER

C ALIFORNIA

L O W E R C A L I F O R N I A

M

E X I 

Los Angeles

San Diego

El Paso del Norte

Santa Fe

Albuquerque

Chi

Mazatlan

1846–1847

THE MEXICAN WAR

Engagement, Date Indicated

U.S. Advance, Date Indicated

Disputed Territory

0 400

Miles

Map 1
8 May 1846

Palo Alto

9 May 1846

Resaca de la Palma

21–23 Sep 1846

Monterrey

22–23 Feb 1847

Buena Vista

8 Sep 1847

Molino del Rey

20 Aug 1847

Churubusco

13 Sep 1847

Chapultepec

18 Apr 1847

Cerro Gordo

9–28 Mar 1847

Vera Cruz

D O N I P H A N 1 8 4 7

W O O L 1 8 4 6

T AY L O R 1846

S C O T T 1 8 4 7

From Ft. Leavenworth

18 Aug

Red River

Rio Grande

Neuces R

B oundary of Adams- Onis Treaty 1819

B o u n d a r y Cl a i m ed by

M e x i co Af te r 1 8 3 6

Boundary Claimed by Texas

Lobos I.

U NORGANIZED

TERRITOR Y

L OUISIANA

ARKANSAS

TEXA S

I C

O

Fort Texas

Houston

San Antonio

hihuahua

Parras

Victoria

Tampico

Matamoros

Camargo

Saltillo

Corpus Christi

Mexico City

Puebla Verz Cruz

Jalapa
12 

the Nueces River where Mexico claimed its border with Texas to 

be. By October 1845, Taylor had assembled 3,860 troops—about 

half of the entire Regular Army—at Corpus Christi, Texas. After 

negotiations broke down to get Mexico to acknowledge the Rio 

Grande as the proper boundary and to sell California to the 

United States, Secretary of War William L. Marcy ordered Taylor 

to cross the Nueces in early 1846 and to establish an outpost, 

named Fort Texas, on the Rio Grande River opposite the Mexican 

town of Matamoros. Taylor dutifully complied before returning 

with the majority of his men to Corpus Christi.

In late April and early May 1846, Mexican forces crossed the 

Rio Grande River, ambushed an American patrol, and laid siege to 

Fort Texas. Marching to break the siege, Taylor met the Mexicans 

at Palo Alto on 8 May 1846. His army consisted of elements of the 

3d, 4th, 5th, and 8th Infantry, a battalion from the 2d Artillery 

serving as infantry, two squadrons of dragoons, and three batteries 

of cannons. During this first major engagement of the war, U.S. 

Army artillery played an especially central role. Battery A, 2d 

Artillery, commanded by Capt. James Duncan, and Battery C, 3d 

Artillery, commanded by Maj. Samuel Ringgold, took up positions 

in front. From their advanced positions, Duncan and Ringgold 

fired at the massed Mexican infantry, and because their guns 

outranged the Mexican artillery, the American artillery decided 

the battle. Artillery fire caused most of the Mexicans’ estimated 

four hundred dead. In his report of the battle General Taylor 

wrote: “Our artillery, consisting of two 18-pounders and two light 

batteries (C, Third, A, Second) was the arm chiefly engaged, and to 

the excellent manner in which it was manoeuvred [sic] and served 

is our success mainly due.” American losses totaled six dead and 

forty wounded. Among the dead was the dashing Major Ringgold, 

soon to be replaced by another brilliant artilleryman and future 

Confederate general, Capt. Braxton Bragg.

The day after the battle Taylor resumed his advance toward 

Fort Texas. At Resaca de la Palma, the Mexican Army blocked his 

advance once again, establishing a defensive line along a ravine. 

The defenses extended for about a mile on each side of the road 

with artillery in the center. Ulysses S. Grant, a lieutenant in the 4th 

Infantry who would go on to lead the Union Army to victory in the 

Civil War, commanded a company during the battle and recalled 

how the rounds fired by the Mexican artillery whistled menacingly 

overhead. When a company of U.S. dragoons overran but failed to 
13

hold the Mexican cannon, Taylor turned to Col. William Belknap, 

commander of the 8th Infantry, and shouted “take those guns, and 

by God keep them!” The regiment, accompanied by elements of 

the 5th Infantry, charged headlong into the ravine. After fierce 

fighting, the American infantrymen captured nine guns which 

they used to fire on the Mexican Army, bringing the battle to a 

successful end.

When word reached Washington that fighting had broken out 

along the Rio Grande, Congress moved to put the nation on a war 

footing. It appropriated $10 million to fund the conflict; created 

a company of sappers, miners, and pontoniers; and strengthened 

the Regular Army by increasing company strength from sixty-four 

to one hundred privates. It also created a new regular unit—the 

Regiment of Mounted Riflemen—to secure settlers moving west, 

although the administration would soon send this unit to Mexico 

as well. Last but not least, Congress authorized the president to 

call up fifty thousand volunteers to supplement the Regular Army. 

Unlike the regular units, the new volunteer regiments were raised, 

organized, staffed, and equipped by the individual states before 

being mustered into federal service. 

After several months of accumulating supplies and incorporating some volunteer units into the Army, Taylor, now a 

brevet major general for his victories at Palo Alto and Resaca 

de la Palma, began marching toward Monterrey, Mexico, in 

August 1846. He reached the city the next month with about 

three thousand regulars and three thousand volunteers. Well 

fortified and defended by seven thousand Mexicans, the town 

of Monterrey posed a significant challenge. Taylor sent attack 

columns toward two sides of the city while artillery fired on the 

fortifications. The Americans encountered tough resistance as 

they pushed their way into the town. The Mexican commander 

offered to surrender on 24 September provided Taylor would 

permit him to withdraw unmolested and grant an eight-week 

truce. Taylor, believing generosity would further peace negotiations, agreed to the terms. However, when President Polk 

received the news, he terminated the armistice and directed 

Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott, commanding general of the Army, 

to conduct a campaign to capture Mexico City. Taylor did not 

welcome the news that most of his army, including virtually all 

of the regulars, would be reassigned to Scott in preparation for 

the upcoming offensive.
14 

The departure of the regulars in January 1847 left General 

Taylor with fewer than seven thousand men, all volunteers except 

for a few companies of the 2d Dragoons and the cannon batteries 

from the 3d and 4th Artillery. Meanwhile, General Santa Anna, 

president of Mexico, assembled an army of some twenty thousand 

men. Taylor expected that Santa Anna would move against Scott 

when his army landed at Vera Cruz. However, when the Mexican 

general learned that most of Taylor’s forces had been transferred 

to Scott, he decided to make a bold strategic move. He turned 

north hoping to win a quick victory over Taylor’s smaller army. By 

22 February 1847, the Mexican Army had fifteen thousand men 

arrayed against fewer than five thousand Americans near Buena 

Vista. When the battle opened Santa Anna hit Taylor’s left hard 

causing it to collapse. As the frantic American retreat threatened 

to develop into a rout, Captain Bragg galloped onto the field at the 

head of Battery C, 3d Artillery. According to Taylor’s report of the 

battle, the Mexicans were “but a few yards from the muzzles of his 

pieces. The first discharge of canister caused the enemy to hesitate, 

the second and third drove him back in disorder and saved the day.” 

According to tradition, Taylor said, “A little more grape, Captain 

Bragg.” However the 3d Artillery regimental history points out that 

in all probability the general really shouted “Captain, give them 

hell,” as the guns raced into position. In any case, Santa Anna, 

having lost between fifteen hundred and two thousand men killed 

and wounded, decided to withdraw. Although a near run thing, 

the American victory ended the fighting in northern Mexico.

Just about the time Taylor began his march toward Monterrey 

in August 1846, the United States opened another front in the 

war. Col. Stephen W. Kearny, commander of the 1st Dragoons, 

left Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with eighteen hundred men designated as the “Army of the West.” Kearny’s mission was to capture 

Santa Fe, Mexico, and then move on to occupy California. He 

had five companies of dragoons, two companies of artillery, and 

two companies of infantry from the Regular Army as well as nine 

companies of Missouri Volunteer cavalry. By 18 August Kearny 

had taken Santa Fe without a fight. Leaving the Missourians to 

hold the town, he moved on to California with the dragoons. 

By early December, as Kearny neared San Diego he met a small 

party of U.S. marines sent by Commodore Robert F. Stockton who 

had been directed to blockade Mexican ports and to assist Army 

operations in California.
15

On 6 December, Kearny attacked a force of Mexican lancers 

at San Pascual with two companies of the 1st Dragoons and 

the marines. Kearny’s dragoons were mounted on mules tired 

from the long trek to California, and when the Mexican lancers 

charged they inflicted severe losses on the Americans. After their 

initial charge, however, the lancers withdrew and Kearny’s forces 

occupied San Diego. Moving north, the Americans engaged 350 

Mexicans just south of Los Angeles and quickly routed them, thus 

ending further resistance in California. In February 1847, the 

Missouri Volunteers who had been left in Santa Fe, along with a 

company of the 1st Dragoons, defeated a force of Mexicans south 

of El Paso. That action ended any further threats to the American 

conquest of New Mexico and California.

American successes in the north and west notwithstanding, 

Mexico refused to accept America’s terms for peace. Realizing that 

the war would continue, in February 1847, Congress authorized the 

recruitment of ten new regiments for the Regular Army. The force 

included the 3d Dragoons, eight infantry regiments numbered the 

9th through the 16th Infantry, and an unusual hybrid organization 

grandly designated the Regiment of Voltigeurs and Foot Riflemen. 

The unit was to consist of highly trained skirmishers—voltiguers in 

French—who would fight on foot but be transported by horses. Only 

An Army train crossing the plains

(Library of Congress)
16 

half of the men in the regiment were to have horses. To facilitate 

short, rapid movements the man on the ground would ride behind 

the mounted soldier. In practice the concept failed to materialize 

and the voltigeurs operated largely on foot, as did the Regiment of 

Mounted Riflemen, which lost most of its horses in a storm while 

crossing the Gulf of Mexico in ships. What truly distinguished these 

two units from the rest of the regular infantry in Mexico was that 

they were armed with model 1841 rifles, weapons that enjoyed 

greater range and accuracy than the smoothbore muskets carried 

by most infantrymen during the war. Congress provided additional 

support in March when it increased the number of companies in 

each artillery regiment from ten to twelve.

While Congress initiated these measures in Washington, 

General Scott prepared his army for an amphibious landing at Vera 

Cruz on Mexico’s east coast. From there he planned to drive inland 

to capture Mexico City. Scott set sail on 2 March with a force of 

more than thirteen thousand men that included both regulars and 

volunteers. On the evening of 9 March, he launched the Army’s 

first major amphibious landing as more than ten thousand men 

went ashore in waves using sixty-five heavy surf boats. The troops 

landed unopposed on a beach approximately three miles from Vera 

The American Soldier, 1847, by H. Charles McBarron 

(U.S. Army Art Collection)
17

Cruz in about four hours. Pvt. George Ballantine, 1st Artillery, 

recalled the landings as “exciting and imposing.” As he watched the 

first wave form up for the run to the beach, “military bands from 

different regiments stationed on the decks of steamers, transports, 

and men-of-war played . . . ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ‘Hail Columbia,’ and 

‘The Star Spangled Banner.’” The city quickly fell after a brief siege.

After capturing Vera Cruz, Scott advanced on Mexico City. His 

army met little resistance initially, but in April, when the army reached 

Cerro Gordo, it encountered a strongly entrenched Mexican force 

of about twelve thousand men holding positions in a rocky defile 

that controlled the road leading to Mexico City. General Santa Anna 

had emplaced artillery batteries on mountain spurs on the left of 

his position. On the right, Mexican guns positioned on El Telegrafo 

commanded the high ground that overlooked the highway. On the 

morning of 12 April, Mexican gunners opened fire on the advance 

elements of Scott’s army while they were still out of range. Not 

wanting to assault the Mexican defenses directly, Scott sent his engineers to look for a route to outflank the position. Lt. Robert E. Lee, 

an engineer and future Confederate general, discovered a ravine that 

bypassed the main defenses. This route enabled Brig. Gen. David E. 

Twiggs to move his division of regulars into a position to attack the 

Mexican rear. Private Ballantine 

recalled his captain asking 

General Twiggs how far they 

should charge, and receiving 

the answer, “charge them to 

hell!” The general’s response 

was prophetic as the fighting 

became a form of hell with both 

sides resorting to the bayonet 

in hand-to-hand combat. Pvt. 

Barna Upton in the 3d Infantry 

witnessed “a kind of fighting 

which I hope never to see again. 

It seemed like murder to see 

men running bayonets into each 

other’s breasts.” Twiggs’ flanking 

movement succeeded in cutting 

the enemy’s escape route, and 

the Mexicans surrendered in 

droves. Santa Anna lost between 

Robert E. Lee in the Dress Uniform 

of a Lt. of Engineers by William 

Edward West

(Washington-Custis-Lee Collection, 

Washington and Lee University, 

Lexington, Va.)
18 

one thousand and twelve hundred casualties and three thousand 

prisoners. American losses were 64 killed and 353 wounded. 

By the end of May 1847, Scott reached Puebla with just 5,820 

effective enlisted men. Many soldiers had been hospitalized with 

wounds and sickness, and seven volunteer regiments whose enlistments had expired had departed for home with another 3,700 men. 

The general had no choice but to halt and await the arrival of fresh 

troops from the United States. After receiving reinforcements that 

brought his army to about ten thousand men, Scott resumed the 

advance on 7 August. With Mexican guerrillas blocking his supply 

line back to Vera Cruz, Scott needed to capture Mexico City before 

his supplies ran out. After three days of marching, the column 

reached a high plateau about fourteen miles from the capital. 

Although the Americans were close to their objective, Santa 

Anna would not concede Mexico City without a fight. At the 

Churubusco River the Mexicans took advantage of the thick walls of 

the San Mateo Convent to conduct a determined defense that kept 

the Americans at bay for several hours. Second Lt. Henry J. Hunt, 2d 

Artillery, rushed forward, unlimbered his cannons under fire, and 

unleashed what Maj. Gen. William J. Worth termed “a fire of astonishing rapidity” at the fortifications. With the help of Hunt’s guns, 

the 3d Infantry forced its way through the defenses, causing the 

Mexican garrison to surrender. The report written by the Mexican 

commander cited Capt. James M. Smith, a company commander in 

the regiment, as having been “the first to present himself upon the 

parapet,” providing “an example of valor to many following him.”

The Americans next met the Mexicans at Molino del Rey. Maj. 

George Wright, 8th Infantry, commanded the assault column. In his 

report of the battle he recalled: “At the distance of 200 yards the enemy 

opened on us with round and grape shot with considerable effect, the 

ground being perfectly level. I instantly ordered the double quick 

step; the line advanced rapidly and immediately came within musket 

range.” After being hit by a musket ball and carried from the battlefield, Wright later reported that “the assaulting column continued 

in combat . . . until the enemy’s positions were all carried and we 

remained in possession of the field; after which there being but three 

officers left and the rank and file very much reduced.” The 5th Infantry 

conducted repeated charges against Casa Mata, a fiercely defended 

stone structure located five hundred yards from Molina del Rey. The 

5th, along with the 6th and 8th Infantry met determined opposition 

and attacked repeatedly before finally driving the defenders from 
19

the position. The 5th Infantry paid a high price for its success. The 

regiment started the battle with 13 officers and 342 enlisted soldiers. 

It lost 3 officers and 27 men killed, 4 officers and 107 men wounded, 

and 5 men missing—some 40 percent of its strength.

The citadel of Chapultepec remained the final obstacle 

to capturing Mexico City. On 13 September, a storming party 

began the assault. The 4th Infantry regimental history succinctly 

describes the action: “Under a terrific storm of shot and shell the 

party reached the ditch and main walls of the fortress, scaling 

ladders were brought up and amid hand-to-hand fighting a lodgement [sic] was secured.” Mexico City surrendered the following 

day. As the 3d Infantry led the victorious American Army into the 

Grand Plaza of the city, General Scott is reputed to have removed 

his hat and told his staff to “take off your hats to the Old Guard of 

the Army.” The 3d Infantry, which today serves as the president’s 

official escort and guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in 

Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia, continues to be known as 

the Old Guard.

On 2 February 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 

officially ended the war (Map 2). The last American soldier left 

Mexico in August, and the national boundary between the two 

countries became the Rio Grande. At the same time, Mexico ceded 

the territories of California and New Mexico, thereby adding 

approximately 1.2 million square miles of territory to the United 

States. During the war the Army had demonstrated its toughness 

and discipline, and Scott credited his victory in Mexico to his 

battle-hardened soldiers. The nation mobilized about one hundred 

sixteen thousand men for the war, although the number in the 

field at any one time was significantly smaller. Over forty-two 

thousand men served in the Regular Army, whose five-year term 

of enlistment meant that most of them were in uniform for the 

entire war. The service of the mobilized militia and U.S. Volunteers 

varied more widely according to the terms of their enlistments. 

Some served for three months, others for twelve months, while 

still others stayed for the duration of the war. Of the approximately 

seventy-four thousand men who entered volunteer service, only 

about thirty thousand served in Mexico.

Although the vast majority of men who fought in the Mexican 

War were raw recruits, they benefited by the existence of the most 

professional officer corps since the creation of the U.S. Army. By 

1847, the U.S. Military Academy, founded in 1802, had produced 
M 

ap 2

Mississippi R

Mississippi R

Fort Snelling 1819

Fort Leavenworth 1827

Fort Scott 1842

Fort Gibson 1824

Fort Smith 1827

Fort Towson 1824

Fort Jesup 1822

Fort Washita 1842

Jeerson Barracks 1826

Fort Belle Fontaine 1804–1826

Fort Atkinson 1840

Fort Atkinson 1819–1827

Chicago

New Orleans

TEXAS

KENTUCK Y ALABAM A

TENNESSE E

ILLINOIS

INDIAN A

MISSOURI

ARKANSA S

L O

U I S I A

N

A

M I C

H I G

A

N

M I S S I S S I P

P I

CANA D A

WESTERN FRONTIER

1817–1848

0 100 200 300

Miles

Boundary Fixed by Treaty

with Spain, 22 February 1819

Territory in Dispute with Mexico,

by Texas and later United States

U. S. Army Forts
21

1,330 graduates, of whom 523 were in the Army when the war began. 

About another five hundred graduates returned to the Army from 

civilian life serving primarily with the U.S. Volunteers. Although 

none of the Regular Army generals and few of its field grade officers 

(major, lieutenant colonel, colonel) had been educated at West 

Point, academy graduates dominated the Regular Army’s junior 

officer ranks, creating a professional atmosphere at the unit level. 

The situation was reversed for the volunteers. Unlike the regulars, 

the U.S. Volunteers had a large number of field grade officers who 

had graduated from West Point, left the Army, and returned to 

uniform for the war. One of the most notable, Col. Jefferson Davis, 

who commanded the 1st Mississippi Rifles, went on to become a 

U.S. senator, secretary of war, and eventually the president of the 

Confederate States of America. However, the volunteers had few 

capable company grade officers (lieutenants and captains). Most 

of them were either appointed by governors for political reasons or 

elected by the enlisted men they recruited and came to their posts 

with little or no military experience.

At the end of the Mexican War, Congress disbanded the 

volunteers and reduced the Regular Army to an authorized 

strength of 865 officers and 8,940 enlisted men. The government eliminated the infantry regiments created during the war 

but retained the Regiment of 

Mounted Riflemen and the 

two companies added to each 

artillery regiment. Whether 

they remained in service or 

returned to civilian life, many 

of the men who had fought in 

the Mexican War—Lee, Grant, 

Bragg, Hunt, Henry Halleck, 

Joseph Hooker, George B. 

McClellan, George Sykes, 

William T. Sherman, P. T. G. 

Beauregard, A. P. Hill, Thomas 

J. Jackson, James Longstreet, 

and George Pickett to name a 

few—would re-emerge on the 

national stage to lead Union 

and Confederate armies during 

the American Civil War.

Bvt. 2Lt. Ulysses S. Grant 

(James Bultema Collection)
22 

The Army Moves West

The dramatic increase in the size of the United States that 

resulted from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, an 1846 treaty 

with Britain that added over 285,000 square miles in what is now 

Oregon and Washington, and an 1853 agreement with Mexico that 

gained about another 30,000 square miles in southern Arizona and 

New Mexico, required the Army to shift its resources west. Prior 

to the Mexican War, the Army had fifty-six military posts in the 

United States, only twelve of which were west of the Mississippi 

River. When thousands of settlers headed for California and 

Oregon after the Mexican War, the Army established new forts 

to protect the migration. By 1860, the Army had seventy-six forts 

west of the Mississippi River alone. Some remained in use for only 

a few years while others remained garrisoned for decades.

For administrative purposes, the Army divided the nation 

into military departments. These changed over time but eventually numbered seven by 1860. (See Map 3.) A brigadier general 

or a colonel commanded each department. Because colonels who 

commanded departments were also regimental commanders, such 

individuals relied on a lieutenant colonel to run their regiment. 

By 1860 the Department of the East comprised all of the 

country east of the Mississippi River. The Department of the West 

stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and 

from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande. The department 

had its headquarters in St. Louis, Missouri. The northwest corner 

of the country constituted the Department of Oregon which 

included Oregon and Washington Territory. Its headquarters was 

at Fort Vancouver, Washington. The Department of California 

included the state of California as well as portions of Utah and 

New Mexico Territories. The Presidio of San Francisco served 

as its headquarters. The Departments of Utah and New Mexico 

lay east of California and consisted of the territories of the same 

names except for those portions assigned to the Department of 

California. The Department of New Mexico had its headquarters 

at Santa Fe, while Camp Floyd served as the headquarters of the 

Department of Utah. Finally, the Department of Texas embraced 

the state of that name with its headquarters at San Antonio.

The reduction of the Army at the end of the war left the military 

establishment with fifteen regiments—eight infantry, four artillery, and three mounted—to garrison the seven departments. The 
23

infantry and mounted regiments moved from Mexico to western 

posts while the artillery regiments deployed to fortifications along 

the Atlantic seaboard. The 1st, 2d, 3d, and 4th Infantry initially went 

to Louisiana, the 5th deployed to Arkansas and Indian Territory, 

while the 6th, 7th, and 8th Infantry traveled to Jefferson Barracks, 

Missouri. The 1st and 2d Artillery went to Governor’s Island, New 

York, while the 3d and 4th assembled at Fort Monroe, Virginia. The 

Regiment of Mounted Riflemen went to Fort Leavenworth and the 

two dragoon regiments remained in the southwest to patrol the 

Mexican border along the Rio Grande. From these locations the 

regiments further broke down and dispersed in small detachments 

to bring security to America’s long coast and expansive frontier.

Contrary to the Hollywood image, very few of the so-called 

forts in the American West were actually fortified. Western forts 

were designed primarily as shelter for small communities of 

officers, enlisted men, family members, and civilian camp followers, 

rather than as defensive structures. They were usually built by the 

soldiers who established and occupied them, and the construction 

varied widely, depending on the skills of the workmen and the 

availability of building materials. The soldier-builders preferred 

lumber, but brick, stone, adobe, and in some cases brush, had to 

be used depending on the location. 

One of the oldest posts west of the Mississippi River was Fort 

Leavenworth, initially established by Col. Henry Leavenworth, 3d 

Infantry, in 1827. Its location near the start of both the Santa Fe 

The second Fort Kearny in 1849

(Nebraska State Historical Society)
Rio Grande

DEPARTMENT OF OREGO N

DEPARTMENT OF UTA H

DEPARTMENT OF

CALIFORNIA

DEPARTMENT OF T

DEPARTMENT OF 

DEPARTMENT OF

NEW MEXI C O

Camp Floyd

Fort Vancouver

Santa Fe

San Antonio

Presidio of San Francisco

INDIA

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MILITAR Y DEPARTMENT S

1860

Military Department Boundary

Department Headquarters

0 100 200 300 400

Miles

Map 3
Mississippi R

Mississippi R

Gulf of Mexico

EX A S

 THE WEST

DEPARTMENT OF THE EAST

St. Louis

Troy

Fort Monroe

WASHINGTON

AN

O R Y

S

I O W A

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OHIO

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VIRGINIA

ALABAM A

TENNESSEE

NORT H

CAROLINA

SOUT H

CAROLINA

ILLINOIS

INDIAN A

MISSOUR I

ARKANSAS

CONNECTICUT

MASSACHUSETTS

MARYLAND

NEW JERSEY

DELAWA R E

PENNSY L V ANIA

NEW Y O R K

VERMONT

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NEW 

HAMPSHIRE

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F L O R I D A

M I N N E S O T A

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26 

and Oregon trails made it the gateway to the West for thousands 

of settlers in the 1850s. Fort Leavenworth also served as a staging 

area for a number of expeditions including campaigns against the 

Sioux in 1855 and the Cheyenne in 1857. 

In June 1849, the Army purchased a privately owned trading 

post along the Laramie River that had been there since 1834. The 

Army acquired the property in response to a congressional mandate 

that it establish military stations along the Oregon Trail. Unlike most 

forts in the West, the trading post had been fortified with walls. 

William “Buffalo Bill” Cody described the original structure as having 

“walls twenty feet high and four feet thick, encompassing an area two 

hundred and fifty feet long by two hundred wide.” “No military frontier 

post in the United States was as beautiful as Fort Laramie,” Buffalo Bill 

went on to write. It “was an oasis in the desert.” Its first garrison, two 

companies of the Regiment of Mounted Riflemen and a company of 

the 6th Infantry, lived in the existing buildings until new ones could 

be built outside the trading post walls in the tradition of the Army’s 

other frontier forts. Fort Laramie became a popular stopping point 

for travelers along the Oregon Trail. The post register recorded that 

almost ten thousand wagons passed through in 1850, and in 1852 an 

estimated forty thousand people traveled by Fort Laramie. The post 

also played an important role as a staging area for expeditions against 

hostile Native Americans in the Great Plains. (See Map 4.) 

Further south, in New Mexico Territory, Lt. Col. Edwin 

V. Sumner, 1st Dragoons, established Fort Union in 1851 to 

protect the Santa Fe Trail and local settlements from Jicarilla 

Apache and Ute Indians. The new fort soon became a mainstay 

of the southwestern defense system in New Mexico Territory, 

providing both operational and logistical functions. Troops 

based at Fort Union conducted operations against American 

Indian tribes, patrolled the Santa Fe Trail, and escorted stagecoaches carrying mail.

In addition to providing protection along the major migration routes, the Army built a series of forts in Texas to protect 

travelers along the road from San Antonio to El Paso, to control 

hostile Apache and Comanche Indians in the area, and to guard 

the border. In 1854, Lt. Col. Washington Seawell, 8th Infantry, 

established Fort Davis, named for Jefferson Davis, the secretary of 

war at the time. Six companies of the 8th Infantry began building 

the post, using local materials to construct what were known as 

jacal-type buildings in which cottonwood strips were tied together 
27

around a frame and filled with mud, clay and grass, providing 

rudimentary shelter from the elements.

The American West encompassed a huge expanse of land, 

and the Army was hard-pressed to maintain a presence everywhere soldiers were needed. Most of the Army’s frontier forts 

were garrisoned by only one or two companies. The 6th Infantry’s 

experience typified how the Army dispersed to cover the frontier. 

The regiment assembled briefly at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, 

after returning from Mexico in July 1848, but by 31 December 

the regimental headquarters had moved to St. Louis. Company D 

remained at Jefferson Barracks, but Companies A, E, and K were 

at Fort Snelling, Minnesota; B and F at Fort Crawford, Wisconsin 

Territory; C at Fort Atkinson, Kansas Territory; G and I at Fort 

Leavenworth; and H at Fort Scott, Kansas. 

Most of the Army’s regiments spent considerable time in the 

field, and companies moved frequently to meet changing requirements. According to its regimental history, the 2d Cavalry spent 

most of “its time under canvas, with a certainty of constant scouting 

and a change of station at least once a year.” Long marches were 

common. While campaigning in 1851, Company B, 1st Dragoons, 

rode 2,240 miles across the central Great Plains. In 1856, the 3d 

Infantry covered 500 miles in New Mexico Territory searching for 

Gila and Mogollon Apaches. During three months in 1858, the 

6th Infantry marched over one thousand miles from Fort Bridger, 

Utah Territory, to Benicia Barracks, near San Francisco, California. 

Capt. Winfield Scott Hancock, a future Civil War general who 

participated in the march, observed that “the men bore the fatigue 

well, and their general conduct is favorably represented by the 

officers.” Two years later, Battery B, 4th Artillery, traveled over two 

thousand miles across “a barren and desert country” to protect 

mail routes from hostile Indians in Utah Territory.

The Army and Native Americans

The Army had been interacting with American Indians 

long before the Mexican War. By the end of the War of 1812, the 

United States had conquered most of the tribes living east of the 

Mississippi River. One important exception was Florida’s Seminole 

Indians. Prior to the Mexican War the United States had fought 

two costly wars in Florida that had resulted in the removal of the 
El Paso

Sante Fe

Camp Floyd

Fort Bridger

Mission of San Diego

Fort Deance

Fort Webster

Fort Conra

Fort Vancouver

Middle Cascades

Blockhouse

Presidio of San Francisco

O R E G O N T R A I L

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1848–1860

Transcontintental Trail

0 100 200 300 400

Miles

Map 4
Mississippi R

Mississippi R

Rio Grande

Gulf of Mexic o

San Antonio

Lawrence

St. Louis

Fort Laramie

Fort Leavenworth

Fort Scott

Fort Kearny

Fort Atkinson

Fort Snelling

Fort Crawford

Fort Union 

ad

Fort Davis

Fort Duncan

Camp Ringgold

Jeerson Barracks

O R E G O N T R A I L

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30

majority of Seminoles to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi 

River. Several hundred had remained behind, however, and in 

1855 a third conflict with the Seminoles erupted. The 4th Artillery 

spent the years after the Mexican War in Florida where, according 

to the regimental history, it “was very actively engaged in hunting 

Indians . . . and suffered great hardships in some of its expeditions through the swamp.” The fighting in Florida finally ended in 

1858 when all but a handful of American Indians agreed to move 

to Indian Territory. The few Seminoles who refused to relocate 

withdrew into the Florida Everglades where they refrained from 

further confrontations with the white population.

Indian-White conflict was rare east of the Mississippi after 

the Mexican War; however, the situation was different west of the 

river. Here Indians resented and resisted the growing encroachment of white settlers on their lands, be they in the Great Plains, 

the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, or the Southwestern 

deserts. The Army’s primary mission in the West was to protect 

American civilians, particularly along the major migration routes 

such as the Oregon and Santa Fe trails. In an effort to make the 

Oregon Trail safer, in the summer of 1851 the United States signed 

a treaty at Fort Laramie that called for peace with the Indian tribes 

that populated the northern Great Plains. Some ten thousand 

Indians representing the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Crow, Shoshone, 

Assiniboine, Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara assembled for the 

largest council in recorded history. Under the terms the Native 

Americans agreed to allow roads and forts to be built in their territories while the U.S. government promised to protect the Indians 

from hostile settlers and to provide an annual payment of $50,000 

worth of goods for fifty years. Although Congress later cut the 

annuity period to ten years, and some tribes received nothing, the 

treaty did bring a brief period of respite along the Oregon Trail. 

Two years later the government met with Comanche, Kiowa, and 

other tribes of the Southern Plains at Fort Atkinson, Kansas, to 

make the Santa Fe Trail safer. The treaty that resulted resembled 

the one signed at Fort Laramie and helped to keep the peace in the 

Southwest for a few years as well.

The Army’s relationship with individual tribes changed over 

time. An example is the Army’s relations with the Navajo in New 

Mexico Territory. In 1853, Col. Joseph K. F. Mansfield reported 

that at Fort Defiance “the Indians are freely admitted in and about 

the fort during the day and are friendly and bring peaches to sell.” 
But as more settlers moved into the area, the Navajo grew resentful. 

In April 1860 some one thousand Navajo warriors attacked and 

briefly occupied parts of the fort before the garrison drove them 

out. The attack marked one of the few times Native Americans in 

the West assaulted an Army fort.

Far more common than assaults on a major post were fights 

in the open countryside. Most of these engagements were small 

affairs with few casualties on either side. Nevertheless, a seemingly small incident could provoke a major fight. In August 1854, 

a settler on a westbound wagon train registered a complaint at 

Fort Laramie that a Sioux Indian had butchered a lame ox. Second 

Lt. John L. Grattan, just one year out of West Point, led a force of 

thirty men from Company G, 6th Infantry, along with two artillery 

pieces and their crews to apprehend the culprit. Although advised 

to be cautious, the young lieutenant led his force directly into an 

Indian camp about eight miles from the fort and demanded that 

the guilty party surrender. A tense standoff ensued that soon led 

to gunfire. While it is not clear who fired the first shot, Indian 

31

Fort Defiance, New Mexico, by Seth Eastman (Architect of the Capitol)
32 

warriors quickly overwhelmed Grattan and his men. A single 

wounded soldier made it back to Fort Laramie to report the 

incident before he died of his wounds.

In August 1855 the Army launched a concerted effort to find 

the Indians responsible for the “Grattan Massacre.” Col. William 

S. Harney, commander of the 2d Dragoons, organized a force 

of more than six hundred men that included companies from a 

several different regiments. Intending to strike “a decisive blow 

against any one of the hostile bands of Sioux,” Harney arrived 

on the North Platte River on 2 September. Six miles away about 

four hundred Brule Lakotas had established a village. About one 

hundred twenty of the Indians were of fighting age. Harney knew 

that the village leader, Little Thunder, had been one of the men 

implicated in the Grattan killings. Planning to attack quickly, 

he sent four mounted companies across the North Platte River, 

where they would be north of the village, to block a retreat by 

the Brules. The infantry moved into position to attack from the 

south. When the mounted units heard gunfire they were to join 

the attack. As the infantry moved forward they encountered a 

small party of Brules on horseback. Anticipating trouble, Little 

Thunder ordered the villagers to strike their tepees and move 

north. He then rode to meet Harney under a flag of truce. Harney 

demanded that Little Thunder turn over the men responsible for 

the Grattan Massacre and other disturbances. Little Thunder 

refused. Harney ordered his troops to advance. As the Indians 

tried to flee they were caught between the infantry and the 

mounted troops. The toll amounted to eighty-six Brules killed 

and five wounded along with about seventy women and children 

taken prisoner. Seven enlisted soldiers died and five were 

wounded. Little Thunder escaped. A search of what remained of 

the village revealed army clothing that presumably belonged to 

Grattan’s men and papers from mail robberies. 

One of the more active theaters in the decade before the 

Civil War was the Pacific Northwest, where the Army attempted 

to pacify the indigenous inhabitants and force them onto reservations. Conflict inevitably resulted. Two examples from 1856 illustrate the nature of these fights. In March 1856, about one hundred 

Yakima, Klickitat, and Chinook warriors surrounded a blockhouse manned by eight soldiers at Middle Cascades, Washington 

Territory. Upon learning of the siege, 2d Lt. Philip H. Sheridan 

gathered about forty infantrymen from the 4th Infantry at Fort 
33

Vancouver, loaded them aboard a steamboat, and headed up the 

Columbia River. At about the same time, Col. George Wright, 9th 

Infantry, sent some two hundred fifty soldiers down the river on 

two steamboats to join Sheridan. The combined force lifted the 

siege, but the Yakimas and Klickitats escaped. Colonel Wright 

tried nine Chinook tribal leaders at a military tribunal and hanged 

eight of them. Both Sheridan and Wright would become generals 

a few years later during the Civil War.

At about the same time as the siege, four companies from 

the 4th Infantry, two from the 3d Artillery, and one from the 

1st Dragoons under Maj. Robert C. Buchanan set out in Oregon 

Territory to force the American Indians of the Rogue River 

area to move onto the Coast Reservation. After two months of 

marching through damp, cold mountains, Buchanan invited the 

Indians to a peace conference in late May. The Indians promised 

to surrender, but when a detachment of about eighty soldiers 

and a howitzer assembled at the designated meeting place at Big 

Meadows, Oregon Territory, a pair of Native women warned 

them that a Rogue Indian chief known as Old John planned 

to attack them the next day. After sending a courier for reinforcements, the men dug in and with the help of the howitzer 

repulsed Old John and his 200 warriors on 27 May 1856. By 

the following day, however, the situation was desperate, with a 

third of the soldiers killed or wounded, their water gone, and 

their ammunition running low. The Native Americans were 

massing for a final assault when reinforcements in the guise 

of a company of the 4th Infantry led by Capt. Christopher C. 

Auger suddenly appeared behind the Indians. The defenders 

rallied and charged the warriors who retreated, taking their 

dead and wounded with them. The fight at Big Meadow effectively ended the Rogue River War, with some twelve hundred 

Indians surrendering to reservations by the end of June. Like 

Sheridan and Wright, Buchanan and Augur were destined to 

become Union generals during the Civil War.

The Army and the Settlers

Although the Army’s mission in the West centered on 

protecting settlers from American Indians, on occasion soldiers 

were called on to protect Indians from whites, be they trespassers, 

unlawful settlers and prospectors, unscrupulous merchants, or 
34 

hateful vigilantes. A number of Army officers had little regard 

for some of the civilians they encountered on the frontier. They 

were struck by the low regard frontiersmen had for human life. 

Lt. Richard Johnson wrote from Fort Davis that “people are 

ignorant, destitute of any refinement, and have no respect for the 

laws.” Another officer described Texas as “a country where little is 

known of, less cared for, the laws of God and man.” Most Army 

officers wanted to resolve problems between Native Americans 

and settlers without resorting to violence, a view often not shared 

by white civilians living on the frontier. Capt. Thomas W. Sweeney 

expressed his opinion that “all our Indian wars, with very few 

exceptions, are brought on either by our frontier settlers . . . or the 

traders in the Indian Country, who as a class, are an unmitigated 

set of scoundrels” (emphasis original).

Trying to keep the peace between whites and American 

Indians was a difficult and often thankless job, but soldiers were 

also called on to keep the peace among whites themselves. On two 

occasions, the government deployed substantial forces for such a 

purpose. The first of these events occurred in Kansas, the second 

in Utah.

In 1854, the question of whether slavery should be permitted 

to spread westward provoked civil disturbances in Kansas. The 

Missouri Compromise of 1820 had prohibited slavery north of 

36°30ʹ, but during its efforts to organize the Kansas-Nebraska 

Territory, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed 

the Missouri Compromise and left the slavery question up to local 

authorities to resolve. The inevitable outcome of this decision was a 

fierce and sometimes violent debate in Kansas between proslavery 

and antislavery settlers. By 1855, two rival governments existed 

in the territory, one proslavery, the other antislavery. The situation came to a head in May 1856, when proslavery forces sacked 

Lawrence, an antislavery, or free-soil, town. Several days later the 

noted abolitionist, John Brown, and six of his followers retaliated 

by executing five proslavery men. The two events ignited numerous 

encounters between armed bands from both sides.

With lawlessness becoming endemic, the territorial governor, 

Wilson E. Shannon, requested assistance from the federal government. Colonel Sumner, commander of the 1st Cavalry and Fort 

Leavenworth, sent mounted troopers to patrol the roads between 

Lawrence and the slave state of Missouri. Nevertheless, for the rest 

of the summer chaos reigned in Kansas as free-soil and proslavery 
35

forces terrorized each other. In the summer of 1857, a force of 

antislavery partisans known as Jayhawkers entered the fray, skirmishing against proslavery guerrillas. Although Army troops 

tried to bring them to heel, the Jayhawkers repeatedly managed 

to elude the troops and disappear into the prairie lands. Not until 

1858 did Capt. Nathaniel Lyon, who by then headed the pacification program, manage to bring calm to the territory. In August, 

Governor John W. Denver, confident that peace had finally 

returned to the state, dismissed the regulars and replaced them 

with mounted volunteers.

Concurrent with the events in “Bleeding Kansas,” instability 

emerged in Utah Territory. The trouble in Utah had its roots in 

1847 when Brigham Young led his followers, the Church of Jesus 

Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons, to the valley 

of the Great Salt Lake where they decided to settle. At the time 

the area belonged to Mexico, and the Mormons, who had been 

persecuted in the East, believed that in Utah they would be free of 

American laws and prejudices. However, in 1848 the United States 

acquired the area from Mexico as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe 

Hidalgo. Mormon leaders then wrote a constitution and appealed 

to Congress to recognize their land as the State of Deseret where 

they could control local laws. The U.S. government instead 

imposed territorial status on Utah. Young became the governor, 

but relations were tense as many Americans were suspicious of the 

Mormon faith and frowned on the Mormons’ practice of polygamy. 

Young consolidated his power by appointing Mormon bishops to 

the probate courts, establishing what many saw as a theocracy in 

the territory.

Trouble between the Mormons and the federal government 

continued to fester with periodic conflicts between Army troops 

and Mormon militia. During the 1856 presidential election 

polygamy became an issue and shortly after his inauguration in 

March 1857, President James Buchanan ordered the Army into 

the Great Salt Lake Valley. Troops from the 4th, 5th, and 10th 

Infantry, the 2d Dragoons, and the 4th Artillery assembled at Fort 

Leavenworth in preparation for the operation. In July the Utah 

Expedition left the fort with 500 men, 97 wagons, and 600 hundred 

animals under the command of Col. Edmund B. Alexander, the 

elderly commander of the 10th Infantry. Upon learning of the 

expedition, Young prepared for war while Mormon rangers 

harassed the federal column. 
36 

Faced with the probability of armed conflict with the 

Mormons and an unseasonable blizzard, Alexander retreated. 

In the meantime, the War Department ordered Col. Albert S. 

Johnston, commander of the 2d Cavalry and future Confederate 

general, to take command of the faltering expedition. Arriving 

on the scene from Texas in November 1857, he led the weary 

troops into winter quarters at Fort Bridger, Utah, and began 

planning for a spring campaign. Shortly thereafter the newly 

appointed territorial governor, Alfred E. Cumming, arrived at 

Fort Bridger. Johnston and Cumming believed that the situation had to be settled by force, but in June 1858, peace commissioners sent by President Buchanan arrived in Utah and negotiated a settlement without bloodshed. The so-called Mormon 

War never happened. The Army occupied several forts in Utah 

Territory until 1861, when it sent the men East at the beginning 

of the Civil War.

Army Life on the Frontier

The years before the Civil War found the Army largely 

isolated from the rest of the nation. The small garrisons in the 

West where most of the soldiers were stationed were lonely 

outposts. Officers and noncommissioned officers who were 

assigned to the War Department in Washington, D.C., or to one 

of the depots or arsenals in the East, as well the artillerymen 

who garrisoned coastal fortifications, lived reasonably pleasant 

lives. Their fellow soldiers stationed on the frontier regularly 

endured hardship, disease, poor rations, and less than desirable 

living quarters.

Soldiers in the nineteenth-century Army generally spent 

their entire military career in the same regiment, whether serving 

for a single enlistment or a lifetime. Many who served on the 

frontier prior to the Civil War were from Northern cities. They 

included young boys and men seeking adventure, men escaping 

problems at home, and European immigrants. As an example 

of the diversity in the ranks, when the 10th Infantry began 

recruiting in 1855, of the first 500 men who enlisted in the new 

regiment, 66 were born in New England, 149 were from the West 

and Midwest, and 285 were foreign-born. The regimental history 

notes that 55 percent of the recruits deserted before completing 

their enlistments. 
37

Other than the occasional encounter with hostile Native 

Americans, life on the frontier could be tedious. Capt. John W. 

Phelps, a company commander serving at Camp Floyd, wrote in 

1859: “I am suffocating, physically, morally and intellectually—

in every way. I am fairly gasping for fresh outside air, and feel 

as an officer said the other day, like begging to be taken out and 

hung for the sake of variety.” Enlisted soldiers likewise found 

garrison life dull. Eugene Bandel, a company first sergeant in 

the 6th Infantry, wrote to his parents in June 1859 that “there is 

very little to vary the monotony as the weeks go by.” First Sgt. 

Percival Lowe with the 1st Dragoons in New Mexico, on the 

other hand, recalled how his unit battled boredom by forming 

a thespian society that performed weekly for the officers and 

their wives. 

Frontier forts varied in their amenities. In 1853 Colonel 

Mansfield toured New Mexico Territory and reported that 

the buildings at Fort Union were “as good as at any post and 

there seems to be enough of them to satisfy the demands of the 

service.” At Fort Webster, however, he found the construction 

“quite indifferent and not sufficient for the command,” while 

at Fort Conrad, “The quarters of both officers and soldiers 

are falling to pieces.” The following year he inspected posts in 

California and was once again largely unimpressed. He found 

the barracks at the Presidio of San Francisco to be “miserable 

adobe buildings,” while the living quarters at the Mission of San 

Diego were “worthless” for the men and “quite indifferent and 

not suitable” for the officers. 

Despite shortcomings in their quarters, the occupants generally made the best of their situation. When Teresa Griffin Viele, 

wife of Lt. Egbert L. Viele, 1st Infantry, got her first look at Camp 

Ringgold, Texas, in 1851, she thought the buildings “all reminded 

me of the house of the foolish man, ‘who builds his foundation 

upon the sand,’ all being in the same plight. There were no signs 

of vegetation around; not even a blade of grass.” In spite of that 

dismal first impression, she looked back on the “year passed in 

this isolated spot as one full of pleasant recollections.” Compared 

with facing the elements when out in the field, Lt. Edward L. Hartz 

reflected that his quarters at Fort Davis were “decidedly pleasant 

when returning fagged out from constant traveling, bivouacking 

and hard feeding. They offer you a comfortable bed, a roof to 

shelter, and the enticements of a tolerably well spread table.” 
38 

Expansion and Modernization

Even as its soldiers engaged in their long-standing duties as a 

frontier constabulary, the Army endeavored to modernize. When the 

Mexican War had ended in 1848 the Army reverted to a peacetime 

strength of fewer than ten thousand soldiers, essentially the same 

strength it had been authorized in 1815 at the conclusion of the War 

of 1812. However, as demands of frontier service increased, Congress 

raised the number of privates in each company stationed in the West 

to 74, making the authorized strength of the Army 12,927 officers 

and men. Then, in 1855, Secretary Davis persuaded Congress to add 

four regiments to the Army, two each of infantry and cavalry. The 9th 

Infantry formed at Fort Monroe and the 10th Infantry assembled at 

Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, after which both regiments moved 

to the Western frontier. The 1st and 2d Cavalry organized at Jefferson 

Barracks. The 1st Cavalry then moved to Fort Leavenworth while the 

2d went to Texas. With the two new cavalry regiments, the Army now 

had three distinct kinds of mounted troops—dragoons, mounted 

riflemen, and cavalry. Each carried different weapons and wore 

The American Soldier, 1855, by H. Charles McBarron 

(U.S. Army Art Collection)
39

different colors to denote their branch—orange for the dragoons, 

green for the mounted riflemen, and yellow for the cavalry. In practice, 

little distinguished how they operated in the field. As a result of the 

augmentations of the 1850s, the Army grew to over sixteen thousand 

men by the end of the decade. 

About the same time that the Army increased its force structure, 

it upgraded its standard infantry weapon when it began replacing 

smoothbore muskets with rifled ones. Rifled weapons had been 

around for many years. Rifling—spiral grooves cut in the bore of a gun 

barrel—caused projectiles to spin rapidly, stabilizing them in flight 

and giving them greater accuracy and longer range. However, rifles 

required a bullet slightly larger than the bore to catch the grooves, 

which meant that soldiers had to pound the round down the barrel, a 

difficult task in combat that significantly reduced the rate of fire. Welltrained infantrymen using a smoothbore could load and fire three or 

four times faster than those with a rifled musket. 

By the middle of the nineteenth century, technological developments made possible an accurate, dependable muzzle-loading 

rifle that could be loaded as quickly as the smoothbore musket. 

In the late 1840s a Frenchman, Capt. Claude E. Minié, invented 

an oblong bullet with a hollow iron cup at the base that fit easily 

into the barrel when loading but which expanded upon being 

fired so as to catch the rifling. European armies quickly adopted 

the new minié round. The U.S. Army tested the concept in 1854 

New rifle-musket ball, caliber .58,” 1855

(Smithsonian)
40 

and pronounced it superior to the venerable smoothbore. The 

next year, the federal armories at Springfield, Massachusetts, and 

Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, began converting old smoothbores into 

rifles by adding rifling to the bores. They also began producing a 

new weapon, the Springfield Model 1855 rifle-musket, manufacturing four thousand by the end of 1858.

The Army also explored the possibility of developing a breechloading firearm that could be reloaded more rapidly than a muzzleloading weapon. In 1854, Congress appropriated $90,000 to test and 

purchase a breechloader. A series of boards examined a variety of 

proposals over the next four years, but could not agree on a model 

to replace the muzzleloaders for the infantry. Fielding a repeating 

rifle offering even greater range, accuracy, and rate of fire than 

any muzzleloader or breechloader also proved difficult. The Colt 

revolving rifle model 1855, issued in limited quantities on a trial 

basis, frequently burned soldiers’ hands when the paper cartridges 

accidentally ignited in the cylinder. George W. Morse corrected that 

problem in 1858 when he developed metallic cartridges to replace 

the paper ones. Two years later he began converting muzzleloaders 

to breechloaders at the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal. That project ended 

in 1861 when Morse defected to the South and Confederate troops 

captured Harper’s Ferry. Meanwhile, by 1860 Northern inventers 

had developed magazine-fed repeaters—such as the Spencer and 

Henry rifles. Therefore, by the outbreak of the Civil War America 

had the technology to produce breechloaders and repeaters. The U.S. 

Army’s Ordnance Department, however, did not want to unduly 

complicate the manufacture and distribution of rifles and ammunition. Consequently, the muzzle-loading rifled musket remained the 

standard infantry weapon for both sides during the Civil War, with 

breechloaders and repeating rifles confined mostly to cavalry and 

specialist units.

The advent of rifled firearms prompted an interest in marksmanship training, something that had rarely been accomplished 

previously. Brig. Gen. William S. Harney, commander of the 

1856 expedition against the Sioux, ordered daily target practice 

to ensure his soldiers would be familiar with their new weapons. 

Sergeant Bandel of the 6th Infantry, part of Harney’s command for 

the campaign, recalled using “seventy-five cartridges in one day 

alone” soon after he received his rifled musket. In March 1856, 

the 10th Infantry also instituted marksmanship practice. Targets 

ranged from two hundred to seven hundred yards. According to 
41

the regimental history, “All shots were recorded and the men classified according to ability.” The 3d Artillery regimental history noted 

that “the superiority of the rifle was at once strikingly manifest.” In 

1858 the Army codified these efforts by introducing a new target 

practice manual. Nevertheless, by the time the Civil War erupted, 

marksmanship training was still in its infancy, and in the rush to 

raise mass armies at the outbreak of the war, such training often 

fell by the wayside.

There were also improvements in artillery between the 

Mexican War and the Civil War. In 1857 the U.S. Army adopted 

the “Napoleon” gun-howitzer. The weapon was named after the 

French emperor Napoleon III who had introduced it to simplify 

his artillery by combining the functions of a howitzer and a gun (or 

cannon) into the same weapon. The smoothbore, bronze weapon, 

classified as a 12-pounder because it fired a solid shot projectile 

weighing twelve pounds, first demonstrated its effectiveness in the 

Crimean War of 1853–1856. The versatile Napoleon gun-howitzer 

could fire solid shot, explosive shell, spherical caseshot (shrapnel), 

and canister. To simplify the supply system, the ordnance department designed standardized ammunition chests that included a 

variety of the types of projectiles the gun could fire.

The Army worked on other aspects of artillery weapons as well. 

In the 1840s, 1st Lt. Thomas J. Rodman developed a method of casting 

iron guns that made them stronger during firing. In the mid-1850s, the 

Army began to experiment with rifled artillery at Fort Monroe, and in 

Artillerymen of Battery C, 3d U.S. Artillery, at drill on Fort Vancover, 

Washington Territory, 1860. (National Archives)
42 

1860 a board of artillery and ordnance officers recommended that at 

least 50 percent of the Army’s guns at forts and arsenals be converted 

into rifles. The idea did not prove effective because adding the groves 

to existing bronze cannons weakened the barrels. Iron proved to be 

the answer. Rifled guns, made of cast iron, began to be manufactured 

in a variety of calibers during the winter of 1860–1861. Capt. Robert 

P. Parrott of the 3d Artillery developed a method to add a reinforcing 

hoop on the breech to withstand the strain of firing. The 10-pounder 

Parrott initially had a 2.9-inch bore, but that increased to 3 inches in 

later models to make them compatible with the ammunition used in 

the 3-inch Ordnance Rifle introduced in 1861. Napoleons, Parrotts, 

and Ordnance Rifles would become standard equipment during the 

Civil War. However, not all new weapons were equally successful. 

When Battery G, 4th Artillery, received mountain-howitzers in 

May 1855, it found that “after firing a few rounds of ammunition at 

practice, the materiel was so much injured by the cracking of axles, 

etc., that the scheme had to be abandoned.”

Along with better weapons came a deeper interest in professional literature. In 1846, 1st Lt. Henry W. Halleck’s Elements of 

Military Art and Science stimulated the study of military theory 

Smoothbore Artillery Ammunition – Cartridges and Projectiles; and Rifled Artillery 

projectiles (Dover Publications, Royalty Free Clip Art)
43

in the United States. Halleck, a graduate of West Point known as 

“Old Brains” because of his academic achievements, would rise to 

the rank of major general and command the Army for a short time 

during the Civil War. 

Much of the new literature focused on artillery. In 1849, 

Maj. Alfred Mordecai’s Artillery for the United States Land Service 

codified the American system of artillery. The manual contained 

complete drawings and descriptions of the different guns, howitzers, and mortars and their carriages that were in the Army’s inventory. The artillery ranged in size from 6-pounders to 42-pounders 

and from 12-pounder Coehorn mortars weighing 164 pounds to 

the 10-inch Columbiad weighing 15,260 pounds (unmounted). In 

1851 the War Department issued new artillery drill regulations. 

General orders issued in 1859 established a systematic course 

of practical and theoretical artillery instruction and authorized 

inspectors to examine artillery units at least once a year. Although 

many artillery companies were not equipped with guns in the 

1850s, these measures promoted uniformity in training. Finally, 

in the late 1850s the War Department formed a panel to write a 

new artillery manual. The resulting Instructions for Field Artillery,

published in 1861, would become the bible of Federal artillerymen 

during the Civil War.

15-inch Model 1861 

(National Archives)
44 

Meanwhile, after completing his work on artillery, Mordecai 

joined Maj. Richard Delafield and Capt. George B. McClellan in 

a trip to Europe to study European military institutions and the 

Crimean War. Their published findings, as well as those of other 

officers posted to Europe during the period, stimulated American 

study of the latest European methods, particularly those of the 

French. One piece of equipment that emerged from these studies 

was a saddle, designed by McClellan and adopted by the Army 

in 1859. The McClellan saddle would remain in service until the 

Army disbanded its horse cavalry after World War II. Less durable, 

but perhaps more consequential, legacies of this era were new drill 

and tactical forms inspired by French practice. One prominent 

example was Hardee’s Tactics, published in 1855 by brevet Lt. Col. 

(and future Confederate general) William J. Hardee. 

Europe was not the only source of inspiration for American 

soldiers. Based on their usage in Africa and the Middle East, in 1843 

Capt. George H. Grossman proposed using camels for carrying 

supplies in the deserts of the American Southwest. Nothing came 

of the idea as he was unable to obtain funding. In 1851, Jefferson 

Davis, then a senator and chairman of the Senate Military Affairs 

Committee, tried but failed to get funds for the Army to buy thirty 

camels. He finally met with success as the secretary of war when he 

convinced Congress to appropriate $30,000 to purchase seventyfive camels and transport them from North Africa to Texas. 

Camels in Texas, by Tom Lovell

(commissioned by the Petroleum Museum in Midlands Texas)
45

In April 1859, Lieutenant Hartz, acting quartermaster of the 

8th Infantry, conducted a trial in the desert country of southern 

Texas along the Rio Grande comparing twenty-four camels and 

twenty-four mules to determine the “capabilities and usefulness [of 

camels] as a means of transportation for military purposes.” From 

May to August Hartz led his expedition through rugged country 

in intense heat with the camels demonstrating that they could 

travel twenty miles a day carrying up to five hundred pounds with 

little or no water. He reported that “the superiority of the camel 

for military purposes in the badly watered sections of the country 

seems to me to be established.”

The camel experiment came to an end with the beginning 

of the Civil War. As Regular Army troops moved east the camels 

were sold or released into the wild to fend for themselves in 

the deserts of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Some 

were killed and eaten by Indians. Others were shot by hunters 

or frontiersmen. But a few survived. A work crew for the Santa 

Fe railroad reported seeing a camel in 1913 near Wickenburg, 

Arizona. Sightings of the animals were also reported near Palm 

Springs, California, in 1930 

and Ajo, Arizona, in 1931.

At about the time the 

Army conducted its camel 

experiment, another new idea 

took root in Texas. In 1854, 

Albert Myer joined the Army 

as an assistant surgeon. Myer 

had studied medicine at the 

University of Buffalo where 

he had also worked for the 

New York State Telegraph 

Company. By combining his 

medical education with his 

telegraph experience he developed a system for deaf-mutes 

to communicate by tapping on 

a person’s hand or cheek. While 

serving at Fort Duncan, Texas, 

he adapted this sign language 

into a signal system using a 

single flag. Letters were transAssistant Surgeon Albert Myer in 

1854 (U.S. Army Signal Center and 

Fort Gordon)
46 

mitted by waving the flag back and forth in a set pattern for letters 

and numbers. The system became known as wigwag. In 1856, 

Myer offered his system to the War Department. The Army’s Chief 

of Engineers, Col. Joseph G. Totten, supported the idea. Secretary 

Davis did not. When John B. Floyd replaced Davis as secretary 

in 1857, Totten reintroduced the proposal. Floyd invited Myer to 

appear before a board of examination in Washington. The board, 

headed by Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, met in March 1859 and recommended further study of the proposed system.

Based on the board’s recommendation, Myer, assisted by 

several other officers including 2d Lt. Edward P. Alexander, 

an engineer officer, began tests at Fort Monroe. The team 

soon communicated at distances up to fifteen miles. In late 

November, Myer reported that the tests exceeded expectations 

and suggested that the Army adopt the system and put him in 

charge of it. In February 1860, Myer and Alexander appeared 

before the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, chaired by 

Senator Davis, and the House Committee on Military Affairs. 

Based on Myer’s testimony Congress included $2,000 dollars in 

the Army’s 1861 budget and approved adding a signal officer 

with the rank of major to the force structure. In June 1860, 

the War Department appointed Myer to the position. Within a 

month of being appointed, Major Myer set out to New Mexico 

Territory where he worked in the field with Maj. Edward R. S. 

Canby of the 10th Infantry. The system proved effective during 

operations against the Navajos, prompting Canby to propose 

a corps of officers who would specialize in signaling, an idea 

Myer embraced. In May 1861, with war on the horizon, Myer 

reported for duty at Fort Monroe where he established a school 

to train personnel in his signal system. This marked the birth 

of the Signal Corps.

The Army and Civil Works

A young nation like the United States could hardly afford to 

confine its use of the talent embodied in its officer corps to purely 

military functions. From the first the government had relied on 

the Army to explore new territories, and with the U.S. Military 

Academy offering the only courses in engineering in the United 

States until the 1830s, it had logically become a major source for 
47

skilled builders, designers, and cartographers. Prior to the war 

with Mexico, Army engineers had helped plan roads, railroads, 

and canals. After the war, Army engineers continued to help build 

the nation. 

Army topographical engineers had begun supervising the 

construction of lighthouses in 1834, and when the Federal government established a Lighthouse Board in 1852, three Army officers 

served as members. The board supervised lighthouse construction 

and inspection. Army engineers also served in each of the twelve 

lighthouse districts and designed and built a variety of lighthouses. 

Seminole and Mexican War veteran George G. Meade excelled at 

the task. As a lieutenant and captain in the 1850s Meade designed 

and built several lighthouses in New Jersey including those at 

Long Beach Island, Atlantic City, and Cape May, and in Florida at 

Jupiter, and in the Florida Keys. Meade would then go on to survey 

the Great Lakes. Another Army engineer, Maj. Hartman Bache, 

borrowed a design from British engineers to build the first screwpile lighthouse in the United States at the mouth of the Delaware 

Bay. Twisting the screw piles into the bottom of the bay secured 

the structure to the seafloor. Both Meade and Bache were destined 

for general officer rank, with Meade rising to command the Army 

of the Potomac during the Civil War.

In Washington, D.C., Army engineers built aqueducts, 

bridges, and public buildings. In 1853, Lt. Montgomery C. Meigs, 

Topographical Engineers exploring the Colorado River near Chimney Peak (National Archives)
48 

future Quartermaster General for the Union Army during the 

Civil War, received the mission of constructing a permanent 

water supply for the city. The project included an aqueduct with 

two bridges that later carried traffic as well as water pipes across 

the Cabin John and Rock creeks. In the years leading up to the 

Civil War Meigs also supervised additions to the Capitol which 

included the House and Senate Wings and the dome.

Prompted by the periodic floods that occurred along the 

lower Mississippi River, Congress appropriated $50,000 for a 

topographical and hydrographical survey of the Mississippi Delta 

in September 1850. The survey included a study of how best to 

develop a twenty-foot navigation channel at the mouth of the river. 

Capt. Andrew A. Humphreys initiated the survey. In 1857, 2d Lt. 

Henry L. Abbot joined him. Four years later the two men coauthored “Report upon the Physics and Hydraulics of the Mississippi 

River,” a document that influenced the development of river engineering and the evolution of the Corps of Engineers for the next 

sixty years. Both men would become generals in the Union Army.

West Pointers Bide Their Time

The years between the end of the Mexican War and the start 

of the Civil War were ones of conflict, innovation, and industry, 

and those who fought, thought, and built received few rewards. 

Promotion was slow in the antebellum Army, and a West Point 

education did not make the process any faster. Between its 

founding in 1802 and the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 the 

U.S. Military Academy graduated 1,966 cadets, about half of whom 

served in the Mexican War. By 1861, 750 of the 1,063 graduates 

still living were on active service in the Army. Even though West 

Point had been producing officers for more than fifty years and 

about 75 percent of the Army’s 1,098 officers in 1861 were graduates, few of them served in senior leadership positions. None of 

the Army’s four general officers at the start of the Civil War were 

West Point graduates. Indeed, three of the four were veterans of 

the War of 1812. Of the nineteen regimental colonels, only six had 

graduated from the U.S. Military Academy. 

The promotion system had little or no room for flexibility. It 

all depended on an officer’s date of rank. Officers were promoted 

within the regiment as openings became available, usually when 
49

an officer left the Army or died. With no retirement program, 

officers tended to remain on active service as long as possible, 

regardless of age or physical infirmities. Officers spent many 

years as lieutenants and captains waiting for a vacancy to open 

up ahead of them. In the years before the Civil War it took an 

average of forty-four years for an officer to reach the rank of 

colonel in the artillery. The infantry fared a bit better, taking an 

average of only thirty-seven years of service to attain that grade. 

In the mounted arms, it took just twenty-one years of service 

to be promoted to colonel, because when Congress added two 

cavalry regiments to the Regular Army in 1855, it created vacancies for field grade officers who were selected from the three 

existing mounted regiments in the Army, thereby lowering the 

average promotion time.

Officers could gain rank outside the rigid seniority system 

by means of a brevet. The brevet, usually awarded for gallantry 

in battle, entitled an officer to wear the insignia of a higher rank, 

although it did not authorize higher pay. In the Mexican War, many 

officers received brevet ranks that they continued to hold after the 

war while they waited to be 

promoted to permanent ranks 

within the regimental structure. Lee, for example, a captain 

in the engineers, received 

three brevets for distinguished 

service in Mexico, allowing 

him to wear the rank of colonel 

for many years before he was 

formally promoted to that rank 

in 1861. Although appointed 

superintendent of the U.S. 

Military Academy at West Point 

in 1852, his permanent rank 

remained a captain of engineers 

until 1855 when Secretary 

Davis appointed him the lieutenant colonel of the newly 

organized 2d Cavalry. Six years 

later Lee received a promotion 

to colonel in the 1st Cavalry, 

Major Joseph Hooker

(Courtesy of William Schultz 

Collection)
50 

but he resigned shortly thereafter to take command of the state 

military forces of Virginia. 

Not all West Point graduates opted for Army life—313 

of those still living in 1861 had resigned to try their hand at 

civilian careers with mixed success. Some thrived as civilians; 

others faltered. Two men who faltered were Ulysses S. Grant 

and William T. Sherman. After receiving brevet promotions to 

the rank of captain during the Mexican War, Sherman resigned 

in September 1853 and Grant left in July 1854. Sherman tried 

banking and law before becoming the superintendent of the 

Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy in 

Pineville, Louisiana. Grant tried farming, selling real estate, and 

running for county engineer. He ended up a clerk in the family 

leather store in Galena, Illinois. The two men met briefly on a 

street in St. Louis in late 1857. Having not seen each other in 

sixteen years they compared notes on their lack of success in 

civilian life and agreed, as Sherman recalled, that “West Point and 

the Regular Army were not good schools for farmers, bankers, 

merchants, and mechanics.”

The Army on the Eve of War

By December 1860, the Army’s authorized strength totaled 

about 18,000 officers and men, but only 16,367 were on the rolls. 

Of these, 1,108 were commissioned officers, four were general 

officers (one major general who served as the commanding 

general and three brigadier generals), and the rest were either line 

officers assigned to the regiments or staff officers serving in the 

War Department. There were 361 staff officers assigned to the nine 

bureaus and departments, all of which were headed by colonels, 

although several held staff brevets of brigadier general. The 

bureau chiefs were men of long service, averaging sixty-four years 

of age, with six over seventy. The 743 line officers served in the 

regiments: 351 in the infantry, 210 in the artillery, and 182 in the 

mounted units. As with the bureau chiefs in the War Department, 

the nineteen regimental colonels were mostly old men set in their 

ways. They ranged in age from forty-two to eighty, the average 

being sixty-three. 

The officers in each regimental headquarters consisted of 

a colonel, a lieutenant colonel, two majors, an adjutant, and a 

quartermaster. The adjutant and quartermaster were lieutenants 
51

detailed from the line companies except in the mounted regiments 

which were authorized additional lieutenants for the headquarters. The enlisted staff included a sergeant major, a quartermaster 

sergeant, and a chief musician. Infantry and artillery regiments 

were each authorized twenty musicians while mounted regiments 

had two chief buglers. Because Congress in 1850 had authorized 

units in the West to receive more men than those in the East, regimental strength could vary significantly. Theoretically a regiment 

in the West could have as many as nine hundred soldiers, but no 

regiment ever reached that size. With recruitment and desertion 

being perennial problems, a typical regiment averaged 300 to 400 

enlisted men with 1 or 2 officers and 30 to 40 men in each company. 

With ten infantry and five mounted regiments of ten companies each (the 8th Infantry had only nine) and four artillery regiments of twelve companies each, there were a total of 197 line, or 

combat, companies in the United States Army on the eve of the 

Civil War. Of these, only eighteen, all artillery, were stationed east 

of the Mississippi River. 

As Southern states started to secede from the Union in the 

winter of 1860–1861 following Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the 

presidential election, secessionists seized control of most Federal 

arsenals and forts in the South but allowed the officers and men 

to move north. One significant exception was the island bastion 

of Fort Sumter located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. 

President Lincoln’s refusal to surrender the fort and the subsequent secessionist attack on it marked the formal outbreak of the 

Civil War. 

The regular regiments responded well to the crisis. They 

assembled their far-flung detachments, marched east to join the 

fight, and, although miniscule in number compared with the more 

than seventeen hundred state volunteer regiments that served in 

the Union Army during the war, acquitted themselves well. But 

while the enlisted ranks remained solidly loyal, the Regular Army 

officer corps was more fractured. Capt. Charles Morton’s description of the situation facing the officers in Regiment of Mounted 

Riflemen in late 1860 typified the dilemma of the officer corps: 

“One-third of our people had plunged into secession believing 

it right, another third declaring coercion wrong, but the other 

third taking the stand that saved the Union.” Some of the officers 

“imbibed the epidemic political heresy of ‘States’ Rights,’ and at 

no little sacrifice, cast their lot with the seceded States, breaking 
52 

close, tender and cherished ties of comradeship, and severing 

their connection with a service they revered and honored.” 

Among those who “cast their lot” with the Confederacy were 168 

West Point graduates. Of the other graduates in the Army, 556 

remained loyal to the Union while 26 took no active part in the 

war. About 20 percent of the officer corps as a whole resigned 

from active service in 1861 to join the Confederate forces. As for 

those U.S. Military Academy graduates who had left the Army 

like Grant, Sherman, and Bragg, nearly 200 returned to don a 

uniform—92 wore Confederate gray and 102 put on the blue of 

the Union Army.

Regardless of which side they chose, Regular Army officers 

of the antebellum Army would have a disproportionate effect 

on the war. By the end of the war, 217 of the 583 men who had 

achieved general officer rank in the Federal Army were West 

Point graduates. One hundred forty-six of the Confederacy’s 425 

general officers were West Point graduates. But their impact went 

beyond that. According to Civil War historian T. Harry Williams, 

“Of the sixty biggest battles, West Point graduates commanded 

both armies in fifty-five, and in the remaining five a West Pointer 

commanded one of the opposing armies.” Leavened on the frontier 

and in Mexico, the men of the antebellum officer corps would 

Some Army installations, like Fort Moultrie, Charleston, South Carolina, were 

located in states that began seceding from the Union. (Accessible Archives)
53

largely acquit themselves well in the greatest struggle the nation 

had known up to that point.

The Army of 1860, although woefully undermanned, was 

a much more effective force than the one that had marched into 

Mexico just fifteen years earlier. It had better weapons and a more 

professional officer corps. But like the Army of 1845, it would soon 

face a conflict for which it was unprepared. After the Mexican 

War, during a decade and a half of conducting small, independent 

operations on the frontier, junior officers had gained considerable experience in leading men in combat, but virtually none of 

the Army’s senior leadership had ever fought a major battle. Men 

who had commanded companies of one hundred or fewer soldiers 

soon found themselves leading brigades, divisions, and corps. 

Even more so than in the Mexican War, the Army was about to 

undergo a stunning transformation as the nation rushed pell-mell 

toward mobilizing what would eventually become a million-man 

force of citizen soldiers who would fight to preserve the Union.
54 

The Author

Clayton Newell is a retired Army officer who completed his 

career as chief of the historical services division at the U.S. Army 

Center of Military History. He now works as an independent 

scholar and military history consultant. Newell is the author of 

several books, including Lee vs. McClellan: the First Campaign 

(2010) and Of Duty Well and Faithfully Done: A History of the 

Regular Army in the Civil War (2011). 
55

Further Readings

Ball, Durwood. Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848–1861. 

Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.

Eisenhower, John S. D. Agent of Destiny: The Life and Times of 

General Winfield Scott. New York: The Free Press, 1997.

McCaffrey, James M. Army of Manifest Destiny: The American 

Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846–1848. New York: New York 

University Press, 1992.

Ness, George T. Jr., The Regular Army on the Eve of the Civil War. 

Baltimore, Md.: Toomey Press, 1990.

Utley, Robert M. Frontiersmen in Blue: The United States Army 

and the Indian, 1848–1865. New York: Macmillan, 1967. 

Reprinted Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981.

For more information, please read other titles in the series The 

U.S. Army Campaigns of the Mexican War and The U.S. Army 

Campaigns of the Civil War published by the U.S. Army Center 

of Military History (www.history.army.mil).
56 PIN : 100444–000

The

Civil

War Sesquicentennial