The Army:
The Continental Army consisted of troops from all 13 colonies. When the American Revolutionary War began at the
Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the colonial revolutionaries did not have an army. Previously, each colony had relied upon the
militia, made up of part-time civilian-soldiers, for local defense, or the raising of temporary "provincial regiments" during specific crises such as the
French and Indian War. As tensions with Great Britain increased in the years leading up to the war, colonists began to reform their militia in preparation for the potential conflict. Training of militiamen increased after the passage of the
Intolerable Acts in 1774. Colonists such as
Richard Henry Lee proposed creating a national militia force, but the
First Continental Congress rejected the idea.
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The multiple failures and fiascos of the War of 1812 convinced Washington that thorough reform of the War Department was necessary. Secretary of War
John C. Calhoun reorganized the department into a system of bureaus, whose chiefs held office for life, and a commanding general in the field, although the Congress did not authorize this position. Through the 1840s and 1850s,
Winfield Scott was the senior general, only retiring at the start of the
American Civil War in 1861. The bureau chiefs acted as advisers to the Secretary of War while commanding their own troops and field installations. The bureaus frequently conflicted among themselves, but in disputes with the commanding general, the Secretary of War generally supported the bureaus. Congress regulated the affairs of the bureaus in detail, and their chiefs looked to that body for support.
[4]
Calhoun set up the
Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824, the main agency within the War Department for dealing with Native Americans until 1849, when the Congress transferred it to the newly founded
Department of the Interior.
[5][6]
Between 1815 and 1860, the main role of the Army was control of Indians in the West, and manning coast artillery stations at major ports. Most of the forces were stationed on the frontier, or and coastal defense units near seaports.
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At the outset of the
American Civil War the regular U.S. army was small and generally assigned to defend the nation's frontiers from attacks by Native Americans. As one after another Southern state seceded many experienced officers and men resigned or left to join the Confederacy, further limiting the regular army's abilities.
The attack on
Fort Sumter by South Carolina militia marked the beginning of hostilities. Both sides recruited large numbers of men into a new
Volunteer Army, recruited and formed by the states. Regiments were recruited locally, with company officers elected by the men. Although many officers in the regular army accepted commissions in the new volunteer units outsiders were not usually welcome as officers, unless they were surgeons whose value was obvious.
[15] Colonels – often local politicians who helped raise the troops – were appointed by the governors, and generals were appointed by President
Abraham Lincoln.
The Volunteer Army was so much larger than the Regular Army that entirely new units above the regimental level had to be formed. The grand plan involved geographical theaters, with armies (named after rivers such as the
Army of the Potomac in the Eastern Theater) comprising brigades, divisions and corps headquarters.
[16]
The rapidly growing armies were relatively poorly trained when the first major battle of the war occurred at
Bull Run in the middle of 1861. The embarrassing Union defeat and subsequent inability of the Confederacy to capitalize on their victory resulted in both sides spending more time organizing and training their green armies. Much of the subsequent actions taken in 1861 were skirmishes between pro-Union and pro-Confederacy irregular forces in border states like Missouri and Kentucky.
In 1862 the war became much more bloody, though neither side was able to gain a lasting strategic advantage over the other. However, the decisive battles of
Gettysburg in the east and
Vicksburg in the west allowed the momentum of the war to shift in favor of the Union in 1863. Increasingly, Confederate forces were outmatched by the more numerous and better equipped Union forces, whose greater population and economic resources became critical factors as the war became one of attrition. An increasingly effective naval blockade further damaged the Southern war economy.
By 1864, long-term Union advantages in geography, manpower, industry, finance, political organization and transportation were overwhelming the Confederacy. Grant fought a remarkable series of bloody battles with Lee in Virginia in the summer of 1864. Lee's defensive tactics resulted in higher casualties for Grant's army, but Lee lost strategically overall as he could not replace his casualties and was forced to retreat into trenches around his capital, Richmond, Virginia. Meanwhile, in the West,
William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta in 1864. His March to the Sea destroyed a hundred-mile-wide swath of Georgia, with little Confederate resistance. In 1865, the Confederacy collapsed after Lee surrendered to Grant at
Appomattox Courthouse.
In all, 2.2 million men served in the Union army; 360,000 of whom died from all causes – two-thirds from disease.
The Volunteer Army was demobilized in summer 1865.
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Learning from our mistakes in not having a well trained coordinated army for national defense we set about creating the "modern" US armed forces (Army, Air Force, Navy) - a standing army who would be ready at a moments notice.
Prior to that though, the entire defense of the United States rested in the hands of unorganized, and oft untrained, militias; usually private in that they belonged to a city or township rather than the state like the National Guard came to be. Those militiamen, were farmers, immigrants, and pretty much anyone who was willing to defend their home, town, state from invasion etc.
That is the militia the 2nd refers to, not the organized militias that didn't exist, but the militia that every single American automatically technically belongs to.
