Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Organization
During the American Revolutionary War the Continental Congress directed the organization of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment in resolves dated 17 and 27 June 1776. The unit comprised three of the four independent Continental rifle companies that had formed in Maryland and Virginia in mid-1775, and six new companies—two from Maryland and four from Virginia. The three 1775 companies were raised and initially commanded by Capts. Michael Cresap, Thomas Price, and Hugh Stephenson. The nine-company force became a regiment on the same tables of organization as the 1st Continental Regiment (originally the Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment). However, unlike this Pennsylvania unit, the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment was an Extra Continental regiment. As such, it was not part of a state line organization because of its two-state composition but was directly responsible to national authority (Congress and the Continental Army). The Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment’s field officers were drawn from the original three 1775 companies based on their seniority—Hugh Stephenson became the colonel, Moses Rawlings the lieutenant colonel, and Otho Holland Williams the major. All company officers were appointed in the summer of 1776, and subsequent recruiting for the unit in the two states extended to the end of the year.
[edit] Battle of Fort Washington and Surviving Elements
By early November 1776 most of the regiment’s officers and enlisted men had joined Washington’s Main Army while it was engaged in the battle for New York City during the New York and New Jersey campaign. They were initially stationed at Fort Washington on Manhattan Island and nearby Fort Lee on the opposite side of the Hudson River. On 16 November most of the regiment was captured or killed during the Battle of Fort Washington. Lieutenant Colonel Rawlings was commanding the regiment at that time because Colonel Stephenson had died of illness in August or September and had not been replaced. However, many members of the regiment (one-third the number in the engagement) were not present at the battle because they were still completing organization and recruiting, and they continued to serve actively with the Main Army. In early December Washington provisionally grouped the remnants of the diminished regiment into two composite rifle companies commanded by the unit's highest ranking officers still free—Capts. Alexander Lawson Smith and Gabriel Long. Smith’s company comprised all the remaining Marylanders in the regiment, whereas the Virginians of the unit were placed under Long’s command.
The regiment’s two composite companies served with the Main Army during its retreat across New Jersey in late 1776, in the ensuing Battle of Trenton and Battle of Princeton (in Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer’s Brigade), and in the early 1777 skirmishing in northern New Jersey. While in winter quarters at Morristown during the winter and spring of 1777, the two-company force and other riflemen from Pennsylvania and Virginia Line regiments supported detached elements in front-line positions and conducted patrols in northern New Jersey, primarily to keep the enemy’s aggressive foraging activities in check (a period termed the Forage War). Because the two units under Captains Smith and Long provided an experienced, if small, force in being, Washington also used them to bolster the new 11th Virginia Regiment commanded by Col. Daniel Morgan after its arrival at Morristown in early April by formally attaching them to this Virginia regiment. Their permanent unit, however, remained the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment.
[edit] Attachment to Morgan’s Provisional Rifle Corps
The success of these rifle units during that skirmishing period, coupled with the arrival of large numbers of new infantry recruits, led Washington to create additional provisional rifle companies. He placed them under the command of Daniel Morgan in early June 1777, calling it the Provisional Rifle Corps. (Morgan then simultaneously led the 11th Virginia Regiment, his permanent unit, and this provisional unit.) Some of the officers and enlisted men in Smith’s and Long’s composite companies, as well as others detached from their regular (musket) regiments, were selected to join this regiment-sized force. The men from the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment all served in one of the Rifle Corps’ eight companies, Capt. Gabriel Long’s Provisional Rifle Company. Like Morgan, Long was now technically in command of two Continental Army units, one permanent and one provisional. Long served in the Rifle Corps until his resignation in May 1779. The Rifle Corps is most notable for the major role it played in the Battle of Saratoga.
Most members of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, however, were not chosen for the Rifle Corps and remained with the Main Army. The Marylanders in Smith’s composite company served with the 11th Virginia Regiment at the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of Germantown, as well as at the Battle of Monmouth after they were administratively attached to the 4th Maryland Regiment at the end of the 1777 campaign season. The Virginians in Long’s composite company remained attached to the 11th Virginia Regiment and fought at the same engagements in 1777 and 1778. Lt. (later Capt.) Philip Slaughter was the acting commander of the company during Long’s two-year attachment to the Rifle Corps and its permanent commander after Long’s resignation. Capt. Alexander Lawson Smith’s term of service with the Main Army ended in September 1780 when Congress approved his resignation from “the regiment formerly Rawlins [sic]” (the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment).
[edit] Fort Frederick and Reorganization
When Lt. Col. Moses Rawlings was exchanged from British captivity in early 1778, he assumed command of the prisoner-of-war camp at Fort Frederick, Maryland, while the elements of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment were in winter quarters. Maj. Otho Holland Williams had been promoted to colonel of the 6th Maryland Regiment in December 1776 while a prisoner of war, and he took command of this unit upon his exchange with Rawlings. The position of major in the reduced Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment was never refilled. In the late spring of 1778, Rawlings began marshalling his regiment (mostly returning prisoners of war) and recruiting new members, although with limited success. Washington initiated definitive measures to strengthen the regiment in early 1779. At his request, Congress authorized on 23 January the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment to be reorganized into three companies, recruited to full strength, and reassigned from Fort Frederick to Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), headquarters of the Continental Army’s Western Department. On 16 February Washington also ordered that all the regiment’s detached members in the Main Army be reincorporated into the unit. The reorganization served to supplement forces engaged in the defense of frontier settlements of present-day western Pennsylvania and vicinity from Indian raids. Pursuant to Washington’s order, the enlisted men in Smith’s composite company who were attached to the 4th Maryland Regiment rejoined Rawlings’ command. In contrast, the Virginians of Long’s composite company already had been all but formally incorporated into the 11th Virginia Regiment by order of the Virginia state government in February 1777. (The state had exceeded its authority in this action, which was technically only within the purview of Congress. Washington tacitly accepted the arrangement, but the process was probably not formalized by Congress until the reorganization and redesignation of the 11th Virginia Regiment as the 7th Virginia Regiment on 12 May 1779.) Moreover, the enlisted men of Smith’s and Long’s companies who were still attached to the Provisional Rifle Corps (not part of the Main Army) remained in that unit until mid-1779, at which time they left the service because their three-year enlistment periods had expired. Therefore, Rawlings’ force now consisted of almost all Marylanders and was typically identified as the “Maryland Corps” during its service on the western frontier. Because no unit-redesignation orders accompanied the reorganization orders, the unit’s formal name remained the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment despite significant variations from the unit’s original 1776 configuration.
[edit] Fort Pitt and the Western Department
After recruitment of the three companies, Rawlings’ men set off for Fort Pitt, arriving there in late May 1779. However, on 2 June Rawlings resigned his command of the regiment and did not accompany his men. He remained the commandant of Fort Frederick and subsequently served as Deputy Commissary of Prisoners for Maryland. The regiment, now commanded by the senior captain (Thomas Beall and later Adamson Tannehill), complemented the existing garrison at Fort Pitt: the 8th Pennsylvania and 9th (formerly 13th) Virginia Regiments. With the arrival of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, Western Department commander Col. Daniel Brodhead now led a formidable force of largely frontier raised men experienced in Indian-style woodlands warfare. In his most notable tactical achievement, Brodhead headed a campaign of about 600 of his Continental regulars (including the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment), local militia, and volunteers to the upper waters of the Allegheny River in August and September 1779, where it destroyed the villages and crops of hostile Indians. However, from mid-1779 until late 1780 the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment was primarily deployed in detachments at several of the frontier outposts in the general vicinity of Fort Pitt, including Fort Laurens, Fort McIntosh, and Fort Henry (Wheeling) in what is now eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, and northernmost West Virginia, respectively.
[edit] Disbanding
On 1 November 1780 Washington issued orders approved by Congress specifying plans for the comprehensive reorganization of the Continental Army effective 1 January 1781. All Additional and Extra Continental regiments, such as the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, that had not been annexed to a state line organization were disbanded by that date. Many of the regiment’s men received discharges on 1 January 1781, and those members of the unit who had enlisted for the duration of the war were transferred to the Maryland Line.
[edit] Sources
Hentz, T. F., 2006, Unit history of the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (1776-1781): insights from the service record of Capt. Adamson Tannehill: Military Collector & Historian, v. 58, no. 3, p. 129-144. (Expanded unpublished manuscript at the Maryland Historical Society, Virginia Historical Society, and Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania.)
Wright, R. K., Jr., 1983, The Continental Army: Washington, D.C., U.S. Army Center of Military History Publication 60-4-1, U.S. Government Printing Office, 451 p.
The 201st Field Artillery (United States) Regiment currently perpetuates the lineage from the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment (U.S. Army Center of Military History, personal communication, 2007).
