U.S. Volunteers

The U.S. Volunteers was the federal government's primary mechanism in the nineteenth century for raising large forces of citizen‐soldiers needed in wartime to augment the small regular army and organized militia and National Guard. These ad hoc units were locally raised and led, but funded by the federal government and under the overall command of U.S. Army generals.

With congressional authorization, governors nominated local notables whom the president commissioned as temporary officers. These recruited local men into temporary units up to regiments. In keeping with militia traditions, enlisted men elected the junior officers.

The system drew upon the essentially local basis of American society in the nineteenth century in order to serve national purposes. It enabled the central government to raise a sizable wartime force in a country where political power was fragmented by federalism.

Raised only when needed, the U.S. Volunteers did not exist in peacetime. Unlike the militia, which, by law, could not be kept in federal service for more than nine months nor sent outside the country, the U.S. Volunteers were enlisted for terms of one to three years, and between 1794 and 1902 fought outside the country in the Mexican War, the Spanish‐American War, and the Philippine‐American War. Within the United States, they fought in the Indian wars, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.

Use of U.S. Volunteers ended in the twentieth century when a strong federal government drew draftees and volunteers into a truly national army.

[See also Army, U.S.: 1783–1865; Army, U.S.: 1866–99; Conscription.]

Bibliography

• John Whiteclay Chambers II, To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America, 1987

Any of many volunteer groups that have served in the U.S. armed forces in every major war, including the Civil War and the Spanish-American War.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.