How many trained soldiers were in the war of 1812?

Answer 1

Around 7,000 troops were in the US Army when the US declared war on Great Britain in 1812. The US Congress had authorized in the preceding months some thirty new regiments in addition to the handful the US already had. Recruiting was very slow though - had all these regiments been up to strength the US would have had somewhere around 30,000 troops in the regular army.

Jefferson and his hand-picked successor and protege, Madison, had not served in the military during the Revolution and understood very little about it, beyond the fact that they wanted no more than an irreducible minimum of it.

As late as 1809, when the Commanding General of the US Army decided to go to New Orleans and court a Creole belle, and to take the entire US Army with him, the Army numbered a total of 2200 men. The Commanding General was a scoundrel, liar, con man and traitor, who for years had been a paid "secret agent" in the employ of Spain, one James Wilkinson. Wilkinson had been Jefferson's chief witness against Aaron Burr, when Jefferson cooked up a treason trial for his vice president. The jury, of Virginians, because Jefferson had ensured the trail would be held on his turf, in Richmond, acquitted Burr and wanted to lock Wilkinson up. When Wilkinson took the whole US Army to New Orleans with him in 1809, he encamped them in a malarial swamp and defrauded them of their rations, while spending most of his own time in town. After deaths from disease, and a great many desertions, the whole, entire US Army emerged from that ordeal 900 strong. Three years later the Jefferson-Madison machine decided to declare war on one of the strongest empires on the planet. The US was extremely fortunate that Napoleon was doing most of the heavy lifting for the next three years.

Answer 2

7000