Volunteers, U.S.
Volunteers, U.S.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...
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