Tag: 5th US Artillery (Battery D)

Wikipedia says: The 5th Air Defense Artillery Regiment is an Air Defense Artillery regiment of the United States Army, first formed in 1861 in the Regular Army as the 5th Regiment of Artillery.

On 4 May 1861, in conformity with the proclamation of the President, a new regiment of 12 batteries was added to the artillery arm of service and became known as the Fifth of the series. Congress confirmed this act of the President, 12 July (approved 29 July) of the same year, but all appointments dated from 14 May. The regiment was constituted on 18 June 1861 and organized on 4 July at Camp Greble, Pennsylvania, where the regiment initially assembled and trained.

Differing in organization from the older regiments, the new one comprised only field batteries, being in this regard the first entire regiment so equipped in the Regular Army. But it must not be inferred that the Fifth was designated by law as a light artillery regiment. “Nowhere in the act of 29 July do the words ‘field or light artillery’ occur, nevertheless, the batteries received the personnel belonging to field-artillery only. This, together with the other fact of the mounting, equipping and sending out as field artillery all the batteries, does not leave in doubt that Congress intended the Fifth to be a field artillery regiment.”

Battery D was engaged at the first battle of Bull Run on 21 July 1861 (this battery was organized on 7 January 1861 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and was known as the “West Point Battery”). Future major general Adelbert Ames was a 1st lieutenant in the battery during the battle and remained on the field to direct fire though severely wounded; he later received the Medal of Honor for this action. Colonel Harvey Brown, the regiment’s first commander, led an expedition that reinforced and defended Fort Pickens, Florida in 1861. He was apparently detached from the regiment, as none of its batteries were on the expedition. He retired on 1 August 1863. Thomas W. Sherman was briefly the regiment’s lieutenant colonel in 1861, during training at Camp Greble. In April 1862 the regimental headquarters moved to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York. The regiment’s batteries were organized gradually from July 1861 through November 1862, with Battery D in existence from 7 January 1861. Seven batteries of the regiment were organized by the end of September 1861.

Four companies were assigned to Fort Jefferson, Florida on 10 November 1865, where they remained until relieved in 1869.