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2. Regular Army Personnel, 1861–1865
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unteers rather than to be broken up to provide leadership and cadre for the militia and Volunteers. President Lincoln disapproved Scott’s plan for a large buildup of the Regular Army and the relegation of the militia and Volunteers to an auxiliary role. Instead, the president proposed to place primary reliance on Volunteers to suppress the rebellion. He did, however, approve a substantial increase in the size of the Regular Army and did not order it to be broken up to provide cadre for Volunteer units. President Lincoln’s policy thus left the Regular Army in limbo; it would not be expanded sufficiently to form the Union’s principal armed force, neither would it be dissolved. This ambiguous policy prompted Scott’s successor as general in chief, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, to observe in his memoirs, “It would have been wise to adopt a definite policy with regard to the regular army—viz., either virtually break it up, as a temporary measure , and distribute its members among the staff and regiments of the volunteer organization , thus giving the volunteers all possible benefits from the discipline and instruction of the regulars, or to fill the regular regiments to their full capacity and employ them as a reserve at critical junctures. I could not secure the adoption of either plan.”1 Until his retirement in November 1861, General Scott continued to pursue a policy aimed at preserving “an elite nucleus of professionals .”2 However, despite Scott’s opposition, in During the Civil War, the Regular Army, which numbered less than 17,000 officers and men on January 1, 1861, expanded significantly but still constituted only a very small fraction of the overall force, which exceeded one million officers and men by May 1, 1865. Although the authorized enlisted strength of the Regular Army rose to a peak of more than 41,000 men by the beginning of 1864, there were never more than 26,000 on the rolls at any one time, and the present for duty strength was always less than 20,000. In all, only 67,000 men served in the Regular Army, less than 4 percent of the more than two million men who served in the Union Army between April 1861 and April 1865. Decision to Keep the Regular Army Intact Although Secretary of War John C. Calhoun’s “expansible army” plan was rejected by Congress in 1820, and official government policy continued to favor reliance on the militia and Volunteers in time of crisis, Calhoun’s basic concept continued to find adherents among professional Army officers. Chief of among them was Bvt. Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott. Based on his experience in the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, Scott strongly believed that the Regular Army would provide the most reliable means of defeating the Confederate forces . Scott’s “Anaconda Plan” strategy called for the Regular Army to be kept intact, expanded by 25,000 officers and men, and used to spearhead an 85,000-man force of militia and Vol39 Regular Army Personnel, 1861–1865 40 Regular Army Leaders and Personnel mand it in battle. A large proportion of them were fitted to command brigades, and some of them divisions, and even army corps. . . . The old sergeants of the army in 1861 were relatively competent company commanders.”5 Col. Emory Upton, perhaps the foremost advocate of the expansible army concept, later lamented that “officers already in command of regiments and brigades were ordered back to their companies to serve in obscurity, while officers of little or no education at once leaped to the command of divisions and armies.”6 And in his 1928 study of the organization and administration of the Union Army, Fred Shannon also criticized the failure to utilize the Regulars to maximum effect, adding that it was yet another factor that contributed to “the prolongation of the war.”7 Expansion of the Regular Army, 1861–1865 On the eve of the war, the authorized strength of the U.S. Army was 1,083 officers and 11,901 enlisted men organized into ten infantry, four artillery, and five mounted regiments plus nine staff departments, the judge advocate general , the signal officer, and four general officers of the line. Such a small army was obviously incapable of suppressing the rebellion or of conducting a sustained campaign on its own and could not even be concentrated without stripping the frontier areas of their defenses against Indian depredations. Thus it soon became apparent that even though...