Six years after the end of the War of 1812, Congress was busy slashing the regular army's budget. Most Americans--and most Congressmen--still regarded a standing army as a dangerous and expensive institution. Isolated from any European threat by the Atlantic Ocean, many felt that a strong militia could adequately defend the country. Some went so far as to call for the complete abolishment of the small regular force.
The Neglected Militia Unfortunately, the government paid not much more than lip service to the militia. Very little money or direction was given to the states by the War Department in Washington. The "enrolled" militia, consisting of the men between 18 and 45 who were legally obligated to serve, went into a decline from which it never recovered. In many states, musters were held only once a year. Many of these degenerated into excuses for speeches by vote-seeking politicians and bouts of public drunkenness by many participants and spectators. By 1840 many states had done away with mustering their enrolled militia.
Volunteer Units While the unorganized, or enrolled, militia was dying a slow death in most areas of the country, a different kind of militia organization was taking its place. Groups of men interested in military drill and camaraderie were forming volunteer militia companies. Volunteer companies had existed in the 18th century; the First Corps of Cadets of Massachusetts was organized in 1741 and the Philadelphia Light Horse in 1774. And of course, the Minutemen who fired the first shots of the Revolutionary War had been volunteers. But the first half of the nineteenth century saw an explosion in the growth of the volunteer militia.
The volunteers paid for their own uniforms, which were often quite elaborate, and for most of their equipment. After they were firmly established, the volunteer units could apply for a charter from the state, and their officers received commissions . As the enrolled militia declined, many states began to rely completely upon the volunteer units, and spent all of their limited federal arms and equipment subsidies on them.
The volunteer militia was primarily an urban institution. Rural volunteers would have to travel long distances for meetings, and, in any case, farmers and frontiersmen tended to have less leisure time for drills and less ready cash for uniforms and equipment. Instead, clerks and draftsmen from the cities and towns made up most of the volunteers. The officers, who were elected by the members of the unit, tended to be wealthier men such as lawyers or bankers. Many officers contributed money to equip poorer members of the unit.
Ethnic Volunteers In the 1840s and 1850s an increasing number of emigrants began arriving from Europe. Most prominent among the groups who began arriving in large numbers during these decades were the Irish and the Germans. In the cities and towns in which they settled, Irish and German volunteer companies were formed, with names like the "Hibemian Guards" and the "German Brigade." Louisiana had Creole units which conducted drill in French, and units filled with Scotsmen outfitted themselves in kilts.
War with Mexico In 1845, Texas was admitted to the union as the 28th state. Before winning its independence in 1836, Texas had been a province of Mexico, and the Mexicans threatened war if the Republic of Texas was made part of the United States. The threat was ignored, and Regular United States troops were sent into territory claimed by both Texas and Mexico. The Mexicans retaliated (or so the United States Army claimed), and war was declared in April 1846.
Volunteers from the South and parts of the Midwest quickly swamped Major General Zachary Taylor and his small army on the border. A majority of Texas' Anglo settlers were from the South, and the war was popular there. For political reasons it was less popular in the North, where the growing anti-slavery movement had objected to Texas' admission as a slave state. Like the Vietnam War some 120 years later, opposition to the war would grow as it dragged on. A young congressman named Abraham Lincoln was one of its early opponents.
Despite the general unpopularity of the war in their region, many northern militia units answered President James K. Polk's call for volunteers. Militia would eventually make up some 70% of the American force which invaded Mexico, in this first United States war to be fought completely on foreign soil.
Initially, volunteer units were given the choice of one-year or "duration of the war" enlistments. When seven volunteer regiments exercised their one-year option, General Winfield Scott was left deep in Mexican territory with an army of only seven thousand, and had to wait months for more volunteers to arrive. Later volunteers had to enlist for the duration of the war. Regular officers were upset when militia officers outranked them, and complained that the volunteer troops were sloppy and poorly disciplined. There were even incidents involving atrocities against Mexican civilians. But as the war progressed, fewer Regular officers complained that the volunteers couldn't or wouldn't fight.
At Monterey, volunteers from Tennessee and Mississippi, including West Point graduate Jefferson Davis' famous Mississippi Rifles, stormed a crucial redoubt and tumed the tide of the battle for the Americans. At Buena Vista, the outnumbered Americans might easily have been defeated. Observing the battle, an aide to General Zachary Taylor suggested that the troops were whipped. "I know it," responded the general, "but the volunteers don't know it. Let them alone, we'll see what they can do." The bravery of the volunteers and the skill of the Regular Army artillerymen won the battle for the Americans.
When the war began, the spit-and-polish Mexican officers in their Napoleonic uniforms had sneered at the ragtag and dirty American army. Later, one Mexican general joked grimly that if his cannons were located in hell itself, the Americans would come and take them.
Unable to defeat the Americans in a major battle, the Mexicans sued for peace, and the war officially ended in February 1848. Mexico was forced to cede her northern provinces--now the states of New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah--to the United States.
Many saw the Mexican War as a vindication of the America military tradition. West Point had trained many of the regular officers, including junior officers such as Robert Edward Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Jackson, and a long list of others who would command during the Civil War. The regular officers provided military know-how and leadership; the militia provided the bulk of the fighting troops.
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