Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

86 The OrganizaTiOnal hisTOry Of field arTillery
Battery M, 7th Regiment of Artillery, near Poncé, Puerto Rico
and he saw no possibility of using Civil War vintage materiel as a reserve because
of the many new advances in gun design. 38
Soon after the battleship Maine blew up in the Havana harbor in February 1898,
Congress authorized the two additional artillery regiments that had been requested
by the War Department, making a total of seventy heavy coast and fourteen light
field batteries in the Regular Army. As stated in a professional journal at the time,
“It took years to induce Congress in time of peace to increase the country’s artillery
forces from five regiments to seven; and the labors of many influential persons
would not then have been successful had not the imminent danger and confident
expectation of war existed.” 39
The Army established the 6th Regiment of Artillery at Fort McHenry, Maryland,
and the 7th at Fort Slocum, New York. Both were organized along the lines of the
five artillery regiments already in service, and the new units gave the arm a maximum
authorized strength of 301 officers and 5,635 enlisted men. The equipment
for each of the fourteen field batteries was to include six guns and caissons, a forge
and battery wagon, and one hundred hor ses. 40 On 26 April, Congress authorized a
fur ther increase in the artillery, bringing the strength of the foot companies up to
200 enlisted men and the field batteries to 173. One lieutenant also augmented each
battery (Table 10). In time of war, the president could determine the composition of
38 Ibid., pp. 19–22.
39 Army and Navy Register, 26 Feb 1898, p. 136.
40 Act of 8 Mar 1898, ch. 53, 30 Stat. 261; WD GO 6, 11 Mar 1898; WD GO 21, 20 Apr 1898.