Overview
This is a list of more and less known Regiments, Companies, Battalions and Brigades of American Civil War. This is meant to be used by players who want that extra immersion and feeling by using historically named units. Apart of unit names, all of the States (both Confederate and Union) as well as some territories are also included.
Confederate State Units
As the prospect of War grew in late 1860 and early 1861 on February 28, 1861 Provisional Confederate Congress made provisional volunteer army and granted military control to the newly chosen Confederate president and “commander in chief” Jefferson Davies. During the War Confederacy mustered between 750,000 and 1,000,000 men. By 1862 however, both Union and Confederacy were forced to put forward Conscription. Confederacy conscripted more men than Union but exact number, once again, can not be told. The principal Confederate armies were Army of Northern Virginia under command of General Robert E. Lee and Army of Tennessee under command of General Joseph E. Johnston.
During the War Confederate unit sizes varied but some general number of men would be the following:
- Corps – 24,000 to 28,000
- Division – 6,000 to 14,000
- Brigade – 800 to 1,700
- Regiment – 350 to 400
- Company – 35 to 40
This numbers are far from prescribed numbers (for example, a regiment when it was raised should have had 1,000 men organised in 10 companies 100 men each) due to casualties, disease, desertion etc. Both sides resorted to Consolidation of units once they were under operational and effective minimum men, but both sides reinforced existing units with fresh recruits.
C.S.A. was special in a way it allowed for a rank of General (full General). Initially Confederate Congress made the rank of Brigadier General as the highest rank but as the war progressed other (higher) general-officer ranks were created. In C.S.A only seven men achieved the rank of full general (Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, and Edmund Kirby Smith.
Union States Units
During the American Civil War United States Army was commonly known as the Union Army. It was made of units from Regular Army of the United States, volunteers and conscripts. As the record keeping of the Union was far better than that of the Confederacy, it is safe to say that Union enlisted around 2,200,000 men including 180,000 colored troops. Much as the Confederacy, Union Army relied heavily on West Point graduates for leadership. In some cases, West Pointers proved to be underwhelming at best (such as G.B. McClellan) while in other cases they proved to be true leaders (such as Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, Phillip Sheridan, Winfield S. Hancock etc.).
Unlike the C.S.A., Union Army due to it’s larger manpower and supplies was capable of supplying and maintaining larger number of armies. The most famous of those are Army of the Potomac, and Army of the Cumberland but sacrifice and efforts of other armies can not be forgotten. Apart from those two, Union also organised Army of Georgia, Army of the Gulf, Army of the James, Army of the Mississippi, Army of the Ohio, Army of the Shenandoah, Army of the Tennessee and Army of Virginia.
Unlike the C.S.A., Union armies had more Corps but with less men (between 10,000 and 14,000). Also, Union Brigades were usually smaller with less regiments. However, Union artillery organisations were 50% larger than Confederate with batteries usually made of six guns (three sections of two guns commanded by a captain). Also, as early as 1862 under patronage of Hunt and McClellan, Union started organizing Artillery Brigades.
Union Army never had a rank higher than Lieutenant General (Ulysses S. Grant) mostly because of the tradition as George Washington also held that rank.
