Two miles east of Chancellorsville, Virginia, the 8^th Pennsylvania Volunteer Cavalry fought stubbornly to stall a line of Confederate infantry. It was midday, May 1, 1863, and the 12^th Virginia Volunteer Infantry had already pushed the Yankee horsemen back a mile. The Virginians were enjoying this opportunity to take on the cavalry, for whom they cared little. Suddenly, as the men of the 12^th stepped into an open field, they found themselves confronted by a line of Federal skirmishers. These men in blue made up the 17^th U.S. Infantry – professional soldiers of the U.S. Regular Army. In a flash, the hunters became the hunted.

Backing up the 17^th were five other regiments of Regulars and Battery I, 5^th U.S. Field Artillery. The Virginians fell back, and the Regulars advanced back up the Orange Turnpike. Marching with parade-ground precision, the Federals drove the Rebels into some woods, where, wrote Private George Merryweather of the 11^th U.S. Infantry, “thoe hot work began.” A group of Virginians took cover behind a farmhouse, only, as one Rebel recalled, to find the Regulars had formed “a solid column on our left and rear. Of course we gave up.”

As the afternoon wore on, the Regulars received support from the rest of Major General George Sykes’ 2^nd Division of the V Corps, composed – with the exception of two infantry units and one artillery regiment – entirely of Regulars. The Federals recaptured all the ground lost that morning. But more Rebels were coming; finally bolstered by the balance of Brigadier General William Mahone’s brigade of Virginians and two brigades of Georgians, the Confederates stopped the Federal advance. Without support from the rest of the army, the Regulars could not secure what they had gained. Soon, it seemed that all their work had been in vain. Sykes had heard nothing from his superiors. “I was completely isolated from the rest of the army,” he later wrote.

The Regulars were accustomed to such predicaments. Even history seems to have deserted them. The Civil War has come to be known as a volunteers’ war, and to a large extent it was. But when inexperienced Federal troops faltered on the battlefield, or when Union generals botched a battle, as Major General Joseph Hooker did at Chancellorsville, it was often to the professionals of the “Old Army” that they turned.

On the eve of the Civil War, the Regular Army of the United States had an authorized strength of only 16,367 officers and enlisted men in 19 regiments: 5 mounted units, 10 of infantry, and 4 of artillery. Of the 198 companies that made up those regiments, 183 were deployed at isolated frontier posts throughout the trans-Mississippi West. The rest were posted on the Canadian border or in coastal artillery fortresses along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. It was an army ill-prepared for war. In December 1860, just 14,663 officers and men could be counted as present for duty. The high morale that resulted from the army’s victory in the Mexican War of 1846-1848 had dissipated in the face of uneventful and unappreciated duty in remote frontier garrisons. When Southern states began the process of secession in late 1860, the Old Army felt immediate effects. Friendships formed at West Point suffered or ended. Many officers of Southern birth submitted their resignations, some reluctantly and tearfully, and left to take up new positions in the armies of the Confederacy. Senior officers, such as Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, Pierre G.T. Beaurgard, and Samuel Cooper soon appeared on the list of general officers of the Confederate States Army.

The U.S. Army's five mounted regiments were hit especially hard. Four out of five regimental commanders or acting commanders – Lee, Albert Johnston, William W. Loring, and Thomas Fauntleroy – left in support of their states. This exodus was soon joined by J.E.B. Stuart, John Bell Hood, Richard Ewell, Fitzhugh Lee, Joseph Wheeler, Henry Sibley, William Hardee, and Earl Van Dorn. Such talented officers were not easily replaced. Some Southern cavalrymen who stayed loyal to the Union, such as Virginians Philip St. George Cooke (Stuart’s father-in-law) and George Thomas, would go on to make names for themselves in the Federal army. But 313 of the 1,108 officers on active duty resigned their commissions.

The departure of such a large portion of the Regular Army officer corps raised disturbing questions. Of the 313 officers who defected, 184 were West Pointers. The other 129 had been commissioned from civilian life. As the war approached, 114 West Point graduates who had left the army before the crisis returned to Federal service; another 99 joined the Confederacy. The War Department’s annual report to Congress for 1861 noted, “…but for these startling defections, the rebellion never could have assumed formidable proportions.” Some, especially in Congress, pointed to West Point as a breeding ground of traitors. In the Senate, a motion to close the academy outright actually came to a vote; it was defeated 29 to 10.

One soldier complained, “We were being deserted by our officers. We were practically an army without officers.” Nevertheless, few enlisted men of the Old Army are known to have deserted to take up arms for the South. While many officers had Southern roots, a large percentage of the common soldiers were from the North. Many were Irish or German immigrants with little sympathy for the Southern cause. Besides, enlisted men could not simply resign from the army as officers could.

Perhaps no events had greater impact on the image and morale of the Old Army than those in Texas in early 1861. Nearly one-fifth of the peacetime army was stationed in the Department of Texas, including most of the 1^st, 3^rd, and 8^th U.S. Infantry regiments, the 2^nd U.S. Cavalry, and batteries of the 1^st and 2^nd U.S. Field Artillery. Brevet Major General David Twiggs, the department commander, was a Georgian with pronounced Southern sympathies. On February 18, 1861, Twiggs surrendered all army property, war materiel, and troops under his command to state officials, even though Texas did not officially secede until March 4. The Federal enlisted men in Texas were to be paroled and evacuated through the port of Indianola. But evacuation was only partially complete when Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12. With the outbreak of war, the enlisted men of the 8^th U.S. Infantry became prisoners. Two years would elapse before they were exchanged, in April 1863. “In Texas,” the War Department noted, “the large forces detailed upon the frontier for the protection of the inhabitants against the attacks of marauding Indians were ignominiously deserted by their commander.”

Not all American officers were as ready as Twiggs to forsake the Union. On February 13, Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee left his post in Texas to report to Commander in Chief Winfield Scott in Washington, DC. On the way, he stopped off in San Antonio, where he found Texas Rangers in control. “Has it come so soon to this?” Lee asked, when told of the situation in town. In Washington, Lee accepted a promotion to colonel of the 1^st U.S. Cavalry. Only when his native Virginia seceded in April did Lee resign his commission.

With the assault on Fort Sumter, Lincoln invoked the 1792 Militia Act to call for 75,000 volunteers from the state militias to serve for three months. But Lieutenant General Scott was under no illusions about the military value of these citizen soldiers. Although state returns showed 2,471,377 men in the organized militia of the Northern states alone, some returns had not been updated since 1827. In reality, the militia was a military force in name only, with great disparity in organization, equipment, and training. Scott told the president he would need a force of 25,000 Regulars and 60,000 three-year volunteers to put down the rebellion. With Secretary of War Simon Cameron, Lincoln discussed the possibility of raising the equivalent of 25 new regiments of Regulars. Lincoln proposed using provisions of an 1846 law that allowed the War Department to expand the Regular Army by simply increasing the number of privates authorized per company.

Major Irwin McDowell and Captain William Franklin, junior officers serving in the War Department, recommended to Scott that all the volunteers be incorporated into the Regular Army, with all officers appointed by the president. Memories of the inefficiency of elected and state-appointed officers during the Mexican War were still strong. Lincoln, however, was unwilling to risk impinging on states’ rights at such a pivotal time, so he allowed governors to continue appointing commanders for the regiments raised in their respective states.

On May 3, 1861, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 42,000 three-year volunteers (in addition to the 75,000 three-month volunteers called for in April), an additional 18,000 seamen, and 23,000 more soldiers for the Regular Army. The new Regulars were to make up eight new Infantry regiments and one additional regiment each for the cavalry and the artillery. Department of the Army General Orders No. 15 and No. 16, dated May 4, 1861, outlined the specifics of Lincoln’s proclamation. The new Regular Army infantry regiments were to have three battalions of eight companies each, in contrast to the Old Army regiments of one battalion of ten companies. Because most state militia units were organized along the old lines, the War Department ordered the volunteer regiments to retain the ten company structure.

In July, Congress passed legislation approving and authorizing Lincoln’s actions, despite legal questions about whether he really had the power to expand the army via presidential proclamation. The Army Organization Act of July 29, 1861, entitled, “An Act to Increase the Present Military Establishment of the United States,” authorized nine rather than eight new Regular Army infantry regiments, along with the additional regiment each for the artillery and cavalry. The act incorporated the organizational structure specified in General Order No. 15. But Congress also insisted that the Regular Army be reduced to 25,000 officers and men at the end of the war, with officers resuming their former positions at prewar rank. This stipulation came about in response to a provision in the Army Organization Act that permitted Regular officers to accept volunteer positions at higher rank without resigning from the Regular Army or jeopardizing their Regular rank and seniority.

An act of August 3, 1861, entitled “Providing for the Better Organization of the Military Establishment,” reconfigured and redesignated the mounted regiments. Under this act, and with the implementation of General Orders No. 54 and No. 55, the 1^st and 2^nd U.S. Dragoons became the 1st and 2nd U.S. Cavalry. The old Regiment of Mounted Riflemen was reconfigured as the 3^rd U.S. Cavalry. The old 1^st and 2^nd Cavalry became the 4^th and 5^th U.S. Cavalry, and the new regiment was designated the 6^th U.S. Cavalry. Recruiting for the new Regular Army regiments was not easy. The army offered higher pay for Regular privates, but mandated that Regulars – unlike volunteers – have two dollars of each month’s pay withheld until they completed their term of service. Regular Army recruiters were also hampered by competition from state regiments’ recruiters; enlistment incentives, or bounties paid by states; the widely held belief that discipline was harsher in the Regular Army; and the recruits’ desire to serve with friends and relatives in locally raised regiments. Cameron acknowledged the problem, writing “that soldiers in the Regular Army, under the control of officers of military education and experience, are generally better cared for than those in the volunteer service,” but that, among recruits, “it is certain that the popular preference is largely given to the latter.”

Not surprisingly, the new Regular regiments never approached their full authorized strength. As of July 29, 1861, enlistment levels in Regular units ranged from approximately 1,300 in the 18^th U.S. Infantry to only 320 in the 17^th. Total Regulars were reported as 20,334. Throughout the war Regular Army strength would hover around that figure, with a high of 25,463 reported in January 1863. The real issue facing Lincoln, Cameron, and Scott, however, was not so much how to get Regulars, but how best to use them. There were two options. One plan called for the Regular Army to serve as a “nucleus of professionalism” around which a volunteer army could be built. Proponents of this plan argued that there were enough Regular officers available to command the volunteers at regiment, brigade, division, and staff levels. Noncommissioned officers of the Old Army could be commissioned to fill company-grade positions, and the remainder of the Regular enlisted men would become the noncommissioned officers of the volunteer army. The other option was to keep the Regular Army intact, rather than disperse its members throughout the volunteer units. Under this second plan, the Regular Army could serve as a distinct, reliable “tactical nucleus,” as well as a role model for the volunteer units.

Army leadership was divided on this issue. Scott viewed the Regulars as an “iron column” not unlike Napoleon’s Old Guard, to be kept in reserve and committed at the decisive point of battle. Such a view reflected his own experience in the War of 1812 and in Mexico, as well as his doubts about the reliability of volunteers and. militia. Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas supported Scott and made it difficult for Regular officers to accept positions in the volunteer units, despite legislation authorizing them to do so. Some officers already serving with volunteers were forced to return to their Regular Army units where they served in relative obscurity.

In contrast to some of their more fortunate colleagues who went on to high rank and distinction commanding volunteer units, those who stayed with the Regulars seldom advanced beyond major. Opportunities for advancement among such a small force as the Regulars were practically nonexistent. As late as 1864, Major General George Meade refused an officer’s request for transfer to a volunteer unit, telling him that “a lieutenant of engineers was of more importance than a colonel of volunteers.” Ambitious Regulars took little solace from such praise.

Unlike Scott and Thomas, other senior officers thought that keeping the Regulars separate would be a mistake. Major General George B. McClellan argued that unless the Regular Army was maintained at its full authorized strength, it would be better to disperse the Regulars throughout the army to provide the volunteers with the benefits of their expertise. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts echoed these sentiments in a July 13, 1861, speech. “Your ablest officers are young captains and lieutenants,” Wilson said, “and if I wished today to organize a heavy military force, such as we are calling into the field, I would abolish the Army as the first act, and I then would take the officers from the Army and place them where their talents fit them to go.”

In an August 22 letter to Cameron, Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts wrote that if “the Government would give our volunteer regiments the benefit of Army officers to command them for a time…it would powerfully benefit us all.” Andrew penned another letter to McClellan that same day, specifically requesting the services of Captain T.J.C. Emory of the 7^th U.S. Infantry, then on recruiting duty in Boston. McClellan endorsed Andrew’s request and sent it on to the War Department. “I do not think it possible,” he noted, “to employ our Army officers to more advantage than in commanding divisions, brigades, and regiments of new troops, particularly when it is remembered that we have almost none of the old troops at our disposal.”

Scott and Thomas eventually relented, making it easier for Regular officers and some noncommissioned officers to transfer to volunteer units without risking their Regular Army rank. Scott did insist, however, on keeping the Regular regiments intact. In doing so, he was in effect trying to have it both ways. It did not work. There were not enough Regular officers to command all the, volunteer units, even if that policy had been adopted from the start; the Old Army was overwhelmed by the scale of mobilization. Most volunteer regiments ended up with political appointee officers who had little or no military experience. At the same time, the Regular Army’s inability to compete with the volunteer units ensured that it would shrink as battle casualties, losses from illness and injury, desertions, and the expiration of enlistments took their toll.

Still, the value of the Old Army’s officers was not lost on the organizers of the state forces. Even while insisting on their rights of patronage in the appointment of officers, most governors recognized the value of a military education and prior military experience. Each sought to entice former officers and West Point graduates to command units raised in their respective states. One contemporary writer remembered this as “a time when the faintest aroma of West Point lent a charm to the most unattractive candidate for a commission.”

The attitude of the volunteers toward the Regulars, especially officers, was mixed. They were impressed by the Regular units’ drill and appearance and tried to emulate them. “Oh, Father, how splendidly the regulars drill,” a Massachusetts volunteer wrote; “it is perfectly sickening and disgusting to get back here and see our regiment and officers maneuver, after seeing those West Pointers and those veterans of eighteen years’ service go through guard mounting I am only glad I saw for now I know I am a better soldier after seeing them perform.”

There were other, less generous opinions, too. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a noted abolitionist minister who commanded one of the Union’s first black regiments, sized up the Regular officers and concluded that West Point training or Old Army experience did not necessarily prepare a man for command in an army largely made up of citizen soldiers. Noting the isolation of many Regular officers, both at West Point and on the frontier, Higginson argued that most had served merely as “clerks in shoulder straps,” forgetting whatever they had learned of leadership and commanding troops. He claimed that any man of intelligence, experienced in business or in dealing with “mankind in masses,” could acquire the skills necessary to command. In a similar vein, other critics stressed that volunteer officers were citizens first and soldiers second, and therefore better equipped to deal with the civilian mentality of their men.

After a few months in command of his regiment, though, a humbled Higginson softened his stance. He conceded that the essence of military authority is the “power of command” and that “there is no preparation like power, and nowhere is this preparation to be found…except in Regular Army training.” He further conceded that “war being exceptional, the institutions which train its officers must be exceptional likewise.” Those, like Higginson, who once viewed army regulations and tradition with disdain, gained new respect for Regular Army procedures when confronted with the myriad details of managing large numbers of men in camp and in battle. It was as Major General William T. Sherman wrote after the war: “I cannot recall any of the most successful [generals appointed from civilian life] who did not express a regret that he had not received in early life instruction in the elementary principles of the art of war.”

Contemporary accounts reveal that, over time, distinction between regulars and volunteers blurred. In some cases, regular regiments remained so in name only. Their ranks increasingly came to be filled with volunteers (and, later, conscripts). Late in the war, even Higginson found it “pleasant to see how much the present war has done towards effacing the traditional jealousy between regular officers and volunteers.” The professionalism of the army as a whole increased as the war progressed, in large part because of the example the Regulars set. In the end, the spirit of the Old Army became the spirit of the whole army.

The debate over how to best utilize the Regulars was still raging in Washington when the men themselves began to make their mark on the battlefield. In the First Battle of Bull Run, near Manassas Junction, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, the raw and untested Union army was sent scampering back toward Washington. During the army’s flight, a battalion composed of eight companies from the 2^nd, 3^rd, and 8^th U.S. Infantry regiments, along with Regular cavalry from the old 1^st and 2^nd Dragoons, and several batteries of Regular artillery stood their ground and covered the retreat. In the aftermath of defeat, the Regulars served as part of the Provost Guard in Washington, while McClellan rebuilt the army.

While Regular units served in other theaters of the war, the largest contingent remained in the East. In his reorganization of the newly christened Army of the Potomac, McClellan initially treated the Regulars as an elite force under his personal command, contrary to the view he had espoused at the war’s outset. In November 1861, McClellan created a cavalry reserve corps under one of the Southern Regulars who had stayed in the U.S. Army, now Brigadier General Philip St. George Cooke. The corps comprised the 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th U.S. Cavalry regiments. The Regular infantry units were combined into one brigade under the command of Brigadier General George Sykes and placed in the Army’s reserve. The brigade was massive: together, the 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th, 6^th, 10^th, 11^th, 12^th, 14^th, and 17^th U.S. Infantry regiments fielded almost 5,000 men. Regular artillery batteries were at first combined in an artillery reserve brigade, but were later dispersed throughout the army, with at least one Regular battery per division, to provide a core of experience for the volunteer batteries. Fighting as separate batteries, these Regular artillery units eventually lost much of their regimental identity and administration – but never their title as U.S. Artillery.

By the time McClellan began his 1862 Peninsula Campaign to take Richmond, Virginia, the infantry reserve brigade had become too large, and was reorganized, with inclusion of the 5^th New York Volunteer Infantry, as the Army of the Potomac’s Regular Division. At Gaines’ Mill, on June 27, the Regulars stood firm against repeated Rebel assaults led by Sykes’s old West Point roommate, Major General D.H. Hill. And, as at Bull Run, the Regulars covered the army’s retreat. The Regular Division reported 1,244 casualties during the Seven Days’ Battles of June 25-July 1; most of the losses were incurred at Gaines’ Mill on June 27. These casualties, combined with disease and non-battle-related losses, left the Regular Division little larger than a brigade.

At the Second Battle of Bull Run on August 29-30, the Regulars were again called upon to cover the army’s retreat; they suffered more than 900 casualties in the process. Recruiting could not keep pace with such losses. Sykes estimated he would need more than 3,000 men to bring his depleted regiments up to strength. When the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia –commanded by former Regular Robert E. Lee – invaded Maryland in September, McClellan designated the shrunken Regular Division as the army’s reserve.

Sent into action in the September 17 Battle of Antietam, Sykes and his Regulars were frustrated when McClellan ordered them to withdraw just as they were about to storm the center of the Rebel line. Similar orders worked to the Regulars’ advantage at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on December 13. Major General Ambrose Burnside, the army’s new commander, ordered the Regular Division into action late in the day, then canceled the orders when he finally became convinced that further assaults against Fredericksburg’s fortified heights were pointless.

When Major General Joseph Hooker took over the Army of the Potomac in the wake of the disastrous failure at Fredericksburg, he reassigned Sykes and his depleted Regular Division to Major General George G. Meade’s V Corps. On May 1, 1863, the first day of the Battle of Chancellorsville – Sykes’s Regulars formed the spear-point of Hooker's attack. The next day, a surprise attack by Lieutenant General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson crushed the Union right flank, and the Regulars once again found themselves fighting a rear guard action while the army escaped. As the last Federal units withdrew across the Rappahannock River, the Regulars followed, destroying the pontoon bridges behind them.

Lee launched his second invasion of the North following his victory at Chancellorsville, and the Army of the Potomac gave chase. Along the way, on June 28, Meade replaced Hooker as the army’s commander, and Sykes took over the V Corps. Brigadier General Romeyn Ayers moved up to command the Regular Division. On the morning of July 2, the Regulars arrived at the crossroads town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. A threat to the Union left late that afternoon prompted orders for the division to take up a position on the endangered flank, between the Wheat Field and Devil’s Den. The division was left virtually alone when Major General Daniel Sickles’ ill Corps broke under Rebel assaults. With the better part of four Southern brigades crashing down on them, the Regulars held on as long as they could. Then, displaying the discipline for which they were famous, they withdrew in order even while Rebel fire continued to decimate their ranks. Reassembled after dark on Little Round Top, the Regulars took stock. Of the 2,613 officers and men who entered the battle, 829 – more than 30 percent – were dead, wounded, or missing. For all practical purposes, the Regular Division had ceased to exist as an effective combat unit.

When draft riots broke out in New York City that same month, the 8^th U.S. Infantry and several Regular batteries were dispatched to assist the civil and military authorities in the city. Details from the 12^th U.S. Infantry, in New York City on recruiting duty, also responded. On August 20, the remainder of the division arrived and remained until order was restored.

In September 1863, the Regular Division was dissolved, and the depleted regiments were reassembled as a Regular Brigade. The unit saw combat in the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-7, 1864. By that time Ulysses S. Grant – now a lieutenant general in command of all the Union armies – was directing operations in Virginia. He took his old unit, the 4^th U.S. Infantry, as his headquarters guard. When Grant laid siege to Petersburg, Virginia, in mid-June, the remainder of the brigade mustered less than 1,000 effective soldiers. In October, these men were sent back to New York City, this time to keep the peace during the November elections. The war in the East had seen the last of the Old Army.

While the Regulars of the Army of the Potomac saw perhaps the hardest fighting of the war, many of their colleagues were scattered across the country. In early 1861, most Regular Army units stationed in the West had been concentrated at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in preparation to move east. The 9^th U.S. Infantry, however, remained headquartered in San Francisco throughout the war, and the 5^th U.S. Infantry remained in New Mexico Territory.

Conflict between Union and Confederate forces in the far West at first centered in New Mexico. In July 1861, Union Major Isaac Lynde abandoned Fort Fillmore under threat of Confederate attack from El Paso, Texas. Attempting to reach Fort Stanton to the northeast with some 500 men of the 7^th U.S. Infantry and a contingent of women and children, Lynde was overtaken by Confederates, and even though his men outnumbered the attackers, he surrendered the entire column. Regulars of the 7th who avoided capture, along with elements of the 5th and 10^th U.S. Infantry and the 1^st and 3^rd U.S. Cavalry, subsequently fought under Brigadier General E.R.S. Canby at Valverde and Glorietta Pass in February and March of 1862, thwarting Brigadier General Henry Sibley’s attempt to extend the Confederacy to California.

Regulars also saw action in the war’s Western theater. Serving in William T. Sherman's XV Corps of the Army of the Tennessee in 1863, the 13^th U.S. Infantry participated in the May 19 and 22 assaults on Vicksburg, Mississippi. The unit suffered 27 casualties among just 250 men, one of the heaviest losses, proportionally, of all the units engaged. The 13^th won a special place in Sherman's heart; after seeing further action at Chattanooga and Missionary Ridge, Tennessee, the unit finished the war as the general’s headquarters guard.

The Regular Brigade of the Army of the Cumberland, under Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Shepherd, consisted of the 15^th, 16^th, 18^th, and 19^th U.S. Infantry regiments. Used in much the same way as the Regular Division in the Army of the Potomac, these Regulars usually found themselves on the most hotly contested ground of any battlefield. On December 31, 1862, at the Battle of Stone’s River, Tennessee, the Regular Brigade was ordered to hold the crumbling Federal right. The 1,600 Regulars gained time for the Union army to regroup. Under fire from three sides, the men finally withdrew in order, but not before suffering more than 400 casualties. The brigade subsequently fought at Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Missionary Ridge, and throughout the Atlanta Campaign. After the capture of Atlanta, the depleted brigade was assigned garrison duty in Tennessee. Like their counterparts in the Army of the Potomac, the Regular units in the West could not be maintained at full combat strength.

Final returns show that 5,798 Regulars died during the war – some 2,200 from battle wounds and the rest from disease and miscellaneous injuries. In spite of their small numbers, these soldiers left a legacy of courage and discipline. Almost without exception, usually in the thick of the most desperate fighting, the Regulars stood their ground and fulfilled their duty in the finest traditions of the Old Army.

After the war, Captain Richard Robins of the 11^th U.S. Infantry summed up the Regulars’ service: “The position held by the Regular Army during the last war was a particularly trying and thankless one…. The little band of Regulars were so small that they were lost sight of by the public, and their doings were left unmentioned…. Their strict discipline and esprit de corps were laughed at by the majority of the volunteers…. The Regular Army had no home and no one to write of them…. On nearly every battlefield some part of them served, always doing their part well and faithfully in the position assigned them…. Silently the Regulars worked…suffering hardships, wounds and death with the bravest and best of them.”

MICHAEL F. HUEBNER teaches military history at the University of Idaho.

Michael F. Huebner. “The Regulars.” (Civil War Times Illustrated, June 2000), pages 24-34, 64, 66-67.