-
Preface
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
xiii by the Federal government: two regiments of U.S. Sharpshooters; 138 regiments of U.S. Colored Troops; nine regiments of U.S. Veteran Volunteers (“Hancock’s Corps); one regiment of U.S. Veteran Volunteer Engineers; four regiments of Indian Home Guards; six regiments of U.S. Volunteers, the so-called Repentant Rebels or Galvanized Yankees, recruited among former Confederate soldiers; and the U.S. Veteran Reserve Corps (earlier the Invalid Corps). Similarly, we have provided only the briefest mention of such temporary War Department organizations as the Provost Marshal General’s Department, the Bureau of Colored Troops, the Cavalry Bureau, the U.S. Military Telegraph, the U.S. Military Railroads and the U.S. Military Railroad Construction Corps, and the Freedmen’s Bureau. Although headed by Regular Army officers, Volunteers made up the bulk of their manpower. Thousands of books and articles have been written about the Civil War. Most of them describe and celebrate the exploits of the volunteers raised by the states. Very few address the small Regular Army. As Maj. John C. White, a Civil War Regular, wrote in the Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States in 1909: At first glance, it may seem strange, in view of the many corps and regimental organizations of the volunteers that have found able historiographers to properly perpetuate their gallant services, that none should have undertaken to commemorate those of our little “Regular The Union Army of the Civil War era was, for all practical purposes, a volunteer organization . As in the Mexican War before and the Spanish-American War after, the Regular Army was kept intact during the Civil War but did not form the basis around which the Volunteer forces were organized. The mass mobilization of volunteers by the states inundated the small Regular Army of the United States. Although the Regular Army staff bureaus expanded and provided the focal point for support of the massive Union armies in the field, the Regular infantry, artillery, cavalry , and engineer units did not expand proportionately . Inadequate enlistments, a high desertion rate, and high casualties prevented recruiting of the Regular Army up to its authorized strength. Indeed, the Regular Army lost many of its most competent officers and noncommissioned officers to the forces raised by the states or in some cases to the Confederacy . Some 67,000 men served in the Regular Army during the Civil War, but their contribution has been overshadowed by that of the more than 2.7 million men who served in the Volunteer forces. By the Regular Army we mean the nine staff departments, the Corps of Engineers and Corps of Topographical Engineers, and the nineteen infantry, six cavalry, and five artillery regiments of the Regular Army that served during the war. Regrettably, considerations of space and focus preclude detailed discussion of those U.S. Volunteer units raised Preface mantling the Union Army quickly and efficiently . The bureaus and other staff agencies in Washington and in the field dealt extensively with numbers of people and things and left behind a well-documented, quantitative record of what they did. The people who ran the various staffs also left personal records in the form of reports, memoranda, orders, and messages and letters to one another that provide a good insight to the inner workings of the Army’s headquarters and staffs. As a result, their story can be told in some detail. In contrast to the Army’s staff departments, which got better as the war went on, the regiments in the field were at their best early in the war. In 1861 the old regiments were busy gathering their companies from across the West, and the new regiments were focused on recruiting , training, and organizing their companies . By 1862, however, most of the Regular regiments, new and old, were in the field where they performed well in battle and set the example for the Volunteers fighting alongside them. Regular Army infantry, cavalry, and artillery units were widely scattered throughout the Union Army, especially in the opening years of the war. We have made no attempt to cover every battle in which there were Regulars present. In selecting which battles to examine , our intent was to focus on the role of the Regulars, not on the battle itself. Recruiting for the Regular Army could not keep up with the high casualty rates, and by 1864, many of the Regular regiments had been depleted to the point where they had to be withdrawn from...