Field ArTillery - US Army Center Of Military History

eOrganizing The arm
On 3 March 1815, in an act “fixing the military peace establishment of the United
States,” Congress authorized the retention of the Corps of Artillery as prescribed in
1814, but reduced the Regiment of Light Artillery to the strength authorized in 1808. 40
Although the various acts of Con gress specified the internal structures of artillery
companies, returns rarely showed any unit organized precisely along these lines. Officers
were frequently absent on long leaves, on recruiting service to fill their depleted
organizations, or performing other duties. During the war, a disproportionate number
of officers had been detailed for duty in Washington and in the ten military districts,
the administrative divi sions of the Army. The units were thus generally severely
under strength. Indeed, the postwar Corps of Artillery was approximately 40 percent
understrength, and on 17 May 1815 Congress reduced it to eight battalions. 41
The Army returned to its former duties of patrolling the frontier and guarding the
coastline. Some of the artillery units served in the field with the troops on the frontier,
but most of the companies were in scattered detachments along the seaboard to serve
the guns emplaced in the numerous fortifications built to defend the coastal cities.
During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, some 12,000 miles of seacoast,
lake, and inland frontier had to be defended, and the War of 1812 had renewed
interest in these defenses. Most of the principal harbor cities had defenses of some
kind dating from the colonial period, and during the 1790s—when the threat of
war with both England and France loomed large—the majority of these had been
strengthened. But before the War of 1812, these fortifications had fallen into neglect;
immediately after the war, Congress attempted to correct this weakness. In late
1817, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun reported to the House of Representatives
on the status of national defense:
The military establishment . . . is sufficiently extensive to keep the fortifications
in a state of preservation, but it is wholly inadequate to defend them against a regular
attack. . . . To garrison the forts in the maritime frontier alone would require . . . more than
thrice our present number alone to repel the assaults. . . . The portion of the army stationed
in the fortifications now erecting is employed to aid in constructing them. . . . It has been
employed . . . in the construction of roads, arsenals, and other public works connected with
the defense of the country. The existing fortifications are thought to be wholly insufficient
in the event of future war. 42
As a result, Calhoun proposed a series of fortresses to be built under the supervision
of the Corps of Engineers. Congress ignored these requests and neglected to
fund fully a fortification program. Moreover, appropriations for ordnance lagged
far behind construction, and completed casemates were thus without guns.
In the years immediately following the War of 1812, the Army underwent several
administrative changes. In May 1815, for purposes of command and administration,
it established two geographical divisions—the Northern Division commanded
by Maj. Gen. Jacob Brown, and the Southern Division commanded by General
40 Callan, comp., Military Laws, pp. 252–55, 266–67 (quoted words, p. 266).
41 American State Papers, Class 5, Military Affairs, 1:535.
42 Ibid., 1:669.
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