The formal end of the Revolutionary War in 1783 required the Continental Congress to consider a peacetime military establishment. Alexander Hamilton sought the advice of George Washington, and his report, proposing a force of just over twenty-six hundred, drew heavily on the general's recommendations. That plan, however, never obtained the approval of the Continental Congress, and on 2 June 1784 the Continental Army was disbanded—with only eighty officers and men retained. The next day, Congress asked the states for seven hundred militiamen and soon appointed Lieutenant Colonel Josiah Harmar to command them. That force was sent into the territory north of the Ohio River to protect settlers, aid surveyors, and prevent intrusions on federal and Indian lands.
In 1786, when a rebellion led by Daniel Shays broke out in western Massachusetts, Secretary of War Henry Knox had no forces with which to protect the arsenal in Springfield. In the end, the Massachusetts militia under General Benjamin Lincoln put down the rebellion and saved the army's weapons and stores. The weakness of the Articles of Confederation was clear. The states were not only slow in recruiting, but many failed to satisfy their 1784 quotas. As a result, in 1785 and again in 1788, the Congress asked the states for three-year troops. Even that approach could not keep Harmar's frontier force close to its authorized strength.
When the Constitution of 1787 went into effect two years later, the army consisted of a single, understrength regiment of infantry and a battalion of artillery for a total of less than seven hundred men. The next year, the new federal Congress authorized a total of 1,216 men for the new nation's army. Although both African Americans and Indians were members of numerous Revolutionary War units, their recruitment into the army was forbidden through the early national period.
In June 1790, when violence between setters and Indians north of the Ohio increased, Knox ordered Harmar and Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, to attack the Indians along the Upper Wabash and Maumee Rivers. St. Clair led a force of regulars and militia north from Vincennes, but he turned back before making contact. Harmar's force, also a mix of regulars and militia, was ambushed at the Maumee. Although his regulars fought well, the militia fled the flight. Harmar lost 180 men, of whom 73 were regulars.
Late the next year, St. Clair was ordered into the field for a second time. Early on the morning of 4 November 1791, his force was attacked by Indians. Again the militiamen fled, trapping themselves and the regulars in a murderous crossfire. St. Clair lost 635 dead and some 300 wounded out of a force of about 1,500. Also killed were some 50 women and children, and many more camp followers were captured. Colonel Richard Butler, St. Clair's second in command was killed, and St. Clair himself had eight bullet holes in his clothing.
In the aftermath of this defeat, Secretary Knox proposed enlarging the army and Congress approved, authorizing a force of nearly five thousand men, including riflemen and dragoons. At the same time the administration decided to reorganize the force, adopting a legionary system of four sublegions, each with its own infantry, cavalry, and artillery. Knox and Hamilton, now secretary of the Treasury, also reorganized the army's logistics and contracting system. This new force was put under the command of Anthony Wayne, an officer with a reputation for boldness.
In the spring of 1792, after enlarging the army, Congress took up militia reform. The administration's plan was to strengthen and make uniform the state forces and bring them under increasing federal influence. The Uniform Militia Act of 1792, however, accomplished neither aim—nor did any subsequent effort. Rather, it insured a national military establishment of regulars, augmented when necessary by federal volunteers, not militia.
Wayne immediately began to shape his new recruits into an effective fighting force. By the winter of 1793-1794, when he began to move into hostile country, he had barely thirty-five hundred of the five thousand men promised, and many of these were needed to protect his lines of communication. Still, what men he had were thoroughly trained. In July 1794 Wayne's fighting force of some two thousand regulars and fifteen hundred Kentucky volunteers moved toward the Maumee River. They burned and pillaged Indian towns as they marched, demonstrating that the British would no longer aid the tribes. Then, on 20 August, Wayne achieved a decisive victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The subsequent Treaty of Greenville in August 1795 brought lasting peace to the Ohio country.
Meanwhile, in 1794 western Pennsylvania farmers refused to pay a new whiskey tax, and President Washington called up nearly thirteen thousand militia and marched them west through Pennsylvania. In the face of this force, resistance quickly ended. In the same year, Knox ordered the arsenal at Springfield to produce muskets, a second national arsenal at Harpers Ferry was approved, and the army began fortifying key seaports. An ordinance officer was appointed to supervise the arsenals, and, two years later, a Corps of Artillerists and Engineers was created to build, garrison, and maintain the new costal forts.
In 1798, during the presidency of John Adams (1797-1801), the Quasi-War broke out—a maritime conflict between France and the United States. When France and England went to war four years before, Washington proclaimed U.S. neutrality, but the French, who believed they were due active support, began attacking American shipping. Fearing a wider conflict, Congress authorized a huge increase in forces. Most important of these was the New Army, consisting of twelve infantry regiments and six troops of dragoons. (The "old" army on the frontier, having abandoned its legionary organization, now had two infantry regiments.) In addition a ten-thousand-man Provisional Army, and an even more massive Eventual Army for emergencies, were authorized should war be declared. Furthermore, the president was authorized to accept volunteers as he saw fit. Of all of these, only a few volunteers and selected units of the New Army were ever organized, and even then few other than officers were ever enrolled. Washington was appointed to command this force, but he agreed to serve only if he could remain at home at Mount Vernon until the nation actually went to war. The Federalists' tendency to appoint only fellow Federalists as officers politicized the army and widened the political divide. The opposition Democratic Republicans claimed to see in this and other administration actions evidence of an incipient military despotism.
By early 1800 the threat of war, external or internal, had subsided, and the Adams administration began to eliminate those new units that had been created. At its peak the army may have approached six thousand men, but when Thomas Jefferson became president in March 1801, the number had declined to roughly thirty-six hundred.
Jefferson, however, was less concerned about the size of the army than about the predominance of Federalist officers in its ranks. Many of these men were strongly opposed to him and his policies and might, he feared, prove unresponsive to his orders. The United States Military Academy was created in 1801 by Jefferson and recognized by Congress in the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802. Both the academy and the Peace Establishment Act were elements in a plan to reduce Federalist influence and ultimately Republicanize the army. The authorized strength of the army was set by the act at just below thirty-three hundred—roughly the size of the force when the measure was passed.
After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the army, under Brigadier General James Wilkinson, began to garrison the towns on the western bank of the Mississippi River and push into the interior of the continent in a series of explorations. The first, in 1804, was the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark up the Missouri River to find a route to the Pacific. In 1805 other detachments ascended the Osage and Mississippi Rivers and in 1806 explored the headwaters of the Arkansas and Red Rivers.
In June 1807,just off Norfolk ,Virginia, the British ship Leopard mauled the American frigate Chesapeake. Resentment in America quickly turned into war fever, but Jefferson took measured steps until February 1808, when the administration asked for a sizable increase in troops that would bring the army to an authorized strength of almost ten thousand officers and men. In April, Congress gave the administration what it had asked, and Secretary of War Henry Dearborn immediately began the process of expanding the army—and finding Republicans to fill the new officer billets. As usual, recruiting lagged behind the appointment of officers, and the actual number of troops reached a high of around seven thousand in 1808 and then declined to an average of about six thousand from 1809 through 1811.
In June 1812 President James Madison asked for a declaration of war against Great Britain on four familiar grounds: impressment, illegal blockades, the Orders in Council, and British encouragement of Indian warfare on the northwestern frontier. Anticipating Madison's request, Congress had, in January, begun the creation of a force of about 36,000 men, plus volunteers, and militia. By 1814 the total authorized force was some 62,500 regulars, of which barely 38,100 were ever raised. Strategic control of the War of 1812 lay with the Americans in 1812 and 1813. They correctly believed that Canada was vulnerable and focused their efforts there during the first two years. The army, however, was ill prepared for an offensive war. Since the Revolution it had been scattered in company-size posts across the country. With few exceptions, there had been neither opportunities nor inclination to train or plan for either large scale offensive action or the support and supply of such operations. After two seasons of campaigning without effect, the British took strategic control of the war. As the duke of Wellington's veterans poured into Canada, it is likely that the United States was saved from further embarrassment by a negotiated peace.
The War of 1812 began under the leadership of senior officers who were veterans of the Revolutionary War—Dearborn, Wilkinson, William Hull, and Wade Hampton, in particular. By 1815 younger men—Jacob Brown, Edmund P. Gaines, Alexander Macomb, Decius Wadsworth, Winfield Scott, and Andrew Jackson—had replaced these veterans, and these new men were the ones who would lead the army for years to come. Just months after the war was over, the army was reduced to an authorized strength of just over twelve thousand officers and men. The actual strength of the force declined until 1820, when the number fell below nine thousand.
At that point Congress announced its intention to reduce the army to about six thousand, and Secretary of War John C. Calhoun proposed an Expansible Army plan that would retain most of the officers and noncommissioned officers needed for a twelve-thousand-man army, but only about one-third of the privates required for the larger force. The House of Representatives favored a more conventional approach, but the Senate sided with Calhoun and his expansible force was approved largely as he had suggested. The bill, however, did not explicitly mention Calhoun or his innovation, and its implications escaped the attention of many at the time (including some serving officers); the measure was also largely overlooked by historians for a century and a half.
In the years following the War of 1812, the army began slowly to evolve into a more professional organization. In 1815 a Board of Tactics presided over by Winfield Scott adopted drill regulations to train and discipline the troops based on the French model. At about the same time, the Ordinance Department began to promote uniformity in production between the two armories at Springfield and Harpers Ferry—a shift that ultimately moved them from craft industry to industrial production. In 1817 the Military Academy at West Point was placed under Sylvanus Thayer, who quickly turned it into a true engineering school—the first in the nation. In 1821 the newly trained engineers found employment as the army began a second program of sea-coast fortification. In 1824, moreover, when the army was ordered to provide surveys, plans, and estimates for roads, canals, and other internal improvements, civil engineering was added to the academic curriculum.
The army's nascent modernization was further evidenced by the creation of its first professional school, an Artillery School formed at Fortress Monroe in 1824. This was followed three years later by an Infantry School at Jefferson Barracks. Although these proved premature and lasted less than a dozen years, it is clear that the years between 1815 and 1828 were the beginning of a long period of slow, sometimes sporadic professional growth for the U.S. Army.