5th Infantry Regiment (United States)
The 5th Infantry Regiment is an infantry regiment of the United States Army that traces its origins to 1808.
Origins: War of 1812
The 5th Infantry Regiment was created by an Act of Congress of 3 March 1815, which reduced the Regular Army from the 46 infantry and 4 rifle regiments it fielded in the War of 1812 to a peacetime establishment of 8 infantry regiments. The Army's current regimental numbering system dates from this act.Six of the old regiments were consolidated into the new 5th Regiment, which was organized on 15 May 1815 under the command of Colonel James Miller. The current 5th Infantry traces its actual origins to the oldest of these regiments, the 4th, which was organized in May–June 1808. After three years' garrison duty in New England, the 4th assembled near Philadelphia in the spring of 1811. From there it proceeded by way of the Ohio and Wabash rivers to Vincennes, Indiana Territory, reporting to the territorial governor, William Henry Harrison, who assembled a force of volunteers and militia around the 4th. They proceeded into north central Indiana to confront the forces of the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, who attacked on the morning of 7 November in the Battle of Tippecanoe, where they were soundly defeated by U.S. forces..
In the spring of 1812, the 4th, commanded by then-Lieutenant Colonel Miller, was ordered to report to Brigadier General William Hull, commander of forces in the Northwest. They reached his headquarters at Detroit on 6 July, two days after being notified of the declaration of war. A week later, Hull's force crossed into Upper Canada, forming a base at Sandwich. On 9 August, marching south to rendezvous with a supply train from Ohio, the 4th charged and broke a British-Indian force at the Battle of Maguaga. A week after that, Hull surrendered Detroit and his entire command, including the 4th, to an inferior force of British, Canadians and Indians. The 4th marched into captivity at Quebec City where the troops spent a month aboard prison ships in the St. Lawrence River before being exchanged on 29 October. The 4th lost 30 more men during the month's voyage from Quebec to Boston.
The 4th spent the years 1813–14 on the Lake Champlain front, participating in the battles of the Chateauguay and Lacolle Mills and the siege of Plattsburgh.
The new 5th Regiment's other ancestors also saw considerable action.
On the Niagara Frontier, the old 9th Regiment served in Winfield Scott's brigade at the battles of Chippawa and Lundy's Lane.
The 21st originally raised by Eleazar Wheelock Ripley was trained to both the US Manual of Arms as well as the British Light Infantry manual, Ripley felt that the 21st should be able to proficiently perform those skills which won the War of Independence, namely, hit and run and skirmish tactics, skills which was to serve the regiment well later in the war under a new commander. James Miller took over from Ripley in early 1814 after Ripley was promoted to brigadier general and saw the 21st through its most rigorous tests in battle. The 21st fought at York, Sackets Harbor, as part of Ripley's Brigade at Chippawa, Lundy's Lane and Fort Erie. At Lundy's Lane, Jacob Brown, the overall U.S. commander, asked Miller if he could take the British artillery on the high ground dominating the battlefield. Miller replied, "I'll try, sir." The 21st proceeded to break the British centre and take the guns with a volley and bayonet charge, holding them until the order to withdraw came from General Eleazar Ripley, Generals Brown and Scott having been incapacitated by wounds earlier in the battle. "I'll try, sir," became the 5th Infantry's regimental motto.
The lineages of the units above that made up the 5th Infantry give the regiment campaign credit for the War of 1812.
1815–1845
The 5th Regiment established headquarters at Detroit in 1815, and began a 30-year period in which it operated in the Upper Midwest, mostly in an area between the current states of Michigan and Nebraska, building and garrisoning a number of posts, protecting the great wave of settlers from native resistance, and serving as a first line of defense in case of another war with Great Britain. Perhaps the 5th's most lasting accomplishment was the construction in 1820–24, of Fort St. Anthony, at the mouth of the Minnesota River. On completion, the Army renamed the post in honor of its commanding officer, Colonel Josiah Snelling. Fort Snelling became the "seed pearl" around which the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul grew.The only noteworthy engagement with Indians during this period was in the Black Hawk War of 1832. Even here, the 5th saw limited action, engaging in combat only in the final act of the war, the Battle of Bad Axe on 1–2 August near the modern town of Victory, Wisconsin. Bad Axe was the last major fight between whites and Indians east of the Mississippi other than the Seminole resistance in Florida.
Mexican–American War
On 1 March 1845, three days before he left office, President John Tyler signed a bill establishing an offer by the United States to annex the Republic of Texas, which had broken away from Mexico in 1836, and make it a state. This set off an immediate diplomatic crisis between the United States and Mexico over the southern boundary of Texas. Mexico claimed that the traditional southern boundary of Texas was the Nueces River; the U.S. and Texas claimed it was the Rio Grande, further south. Incoming President James Knox Polk directed Brigadier General Zachary Taylor to form an "Army of Observation" at Corpus Christi, Texas, ostensibly to protect the disputed zone from Mexican invasion. Five companies of the 5th Infantry under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James S. McIntosh reported to Taylor at Corpus Christi on 11 October 1845, two days before Texas voters accepted the annexation offer.On 9 March 1846, Taylor's army left Corpus Christi to march to the Rio Grande and assert U.S. sovereignty over the expanded area. They arrived on 28 March, across the river from Matamoros and built a fortified camp, Fort Texas, on the site of the modern city of Brownsville, Texas. Taylor also established a supply base 27 miles east at Point Isabel, at the mouth of the river.
The 5th marched with Taylor from Fort Texas to Point Isabel in late April to clear their supply route of Mexican troops. While they were fortifying that base, the Mexican Army of the North laid siege to Fort Texas, beginning a bombardment of the post on 3 May. Taylor's army marched back from Point Isabel and met the enemy on 8 May, at Palo Alto, several miles east of the fort. In the resulting battle, the 5th Infantry broke a charge by Mexican lancers trying to break through to Taylor's supply train. Over night, the Mexicans withdrew to a better defensive position at Resaca de la Palma, which Taylor's army assaulted on the morning of the 9th. After stiff initial fighting, U.S. dragoons overran the Mexican artillery. The 5th and 8th Regiments then led a charge that broke the Mexican center and routed their army.
Taylor's troops relieved Fort Texas, crossed the Rio Grande into undisputed Mexican territory and occupied Matamoros, where they spent most of the summer. In late August Taylor moved south toward Monterrey, arriving on 19 September 1846. The 5th Infantry was assigned to the division of Brigadier General William J. Worth. The Battle of Monterrey began on 21 September. David Twiggs' division assaulted the city, soon finding itself in house-to-house fighting, while Worth's division went around the city, cutting off its communications. On the 23rd, the 5th Infantry captured Fort Soldado, surrounding the Mexican forces. Worth's division also fought its way into the city, contributing to the Mexicans' decision to negotiate. They surrendered the city to Taylor in exchange for a two-month truce.
After Monterrey, the 5th and the other regular regiments in Taylor's command were replaced by volunteers. They returned to Texas to join Major General Winfield Scott's expedition to Veracruz. The whole regiment was now together, though two companies were detached during the march to Mexico City and spent their time defending supply trains from guerilla attacks. Still in Worth's division, the 5th captured Perote on 22 April 1847.
Reaching the outskirts of Mexico City, the 5th was part of the flanking movement that led to the victory at Contreras on 19 August. The following day, they took the right flank in the assault on the bridgehead at Churubusco. The 5th provided storming parties for the assaults on the Molino del Rey on 8 September and Chapultepec Castle on the 13th; the full regiment followed up in the latter seizure. Later on the 13th, the 5th joined in the seizure of the Garita San Cosme, one of the city gates of Mexico City itself. This led to the city's surrender on the 14th.
1848–1861
In May 1848, after the United States Senate ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the 5th Infantry marched from Mexico City to Veracruz and returned to the United States. They spent 1849–50 in Arkansas and the neighboring Indian Territory, then replaced the 7th Infantry in Texas. In 1851 they were stationed mainly along the upper Brazos River; by 1854 they had moved to Fort McIntosh outside the city of Laredo.In early 1857 the 5th moved to south Florida, where they spent several months skirmishing with Seminoles in the area around Fort Myers. The 5th left Florida in June for Fort Laramie in modern-day Wyoming, where they took part in the Buchanan administration's expedition against the Mormons. The regiment stayed at Camp Floyd in the Great Salt Lake valley until the autumn of 1860, when it moved to New Mexico for operations against the Navajos.
Civil War
The 5th Infantry spent the Civil War in the territory of New Mexico. The regiment was ordered to concentrate at Albuquerque in the spring of 1861 for a move east, but the department commander persuaded Washington to leave the 5th on the frontier.In late 1861, French inventor J.-A. de Brame had two 4-pounder revolver guns of his design built and offered them to the regiment. The prototype of the weapon is now on display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, while a 1/6th model that Brame presented to Napoléon III is on display at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris.
In early 1862 a Confederate force from Texas invaded New Mexico. Four companies of the 5th formed the Union rear guard in the Confederate victory at Valverde on 21 February, after which the Confederates occupied Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Two other companies of the 5th captured a field piece at the Battle of Glorieta Pass on 28 March, the beginning of the end for the Confederate forces. The 5th also fought in the action at Peralta on 15 April where the enemy lost a large part of their supply train. The Confederates ultimately withdrew to San Antonio, and the 5th spent the rest of the war on frontier duty, watching for another Confederate incursion, which never came.
On 1 June 1863 John F. Reynolds officially became colonel of the 5th; however, he was on detached service as a Major General of Volunteers, commanding a corps of the Army of the Potomac. He was killed a month later on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. His replacement as commander of the 5th was another volunteer general, Daniel Butterfield, the composer of the bugle call "Taps". Butterfield, also wounded at Gettysburg, did not join the regiment during the war.