1st Rhode Island Infantry - 1st Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteers

1st Regiment, Rhode Island Volunteers

Under proclamation signed April 23, 1898, President William McKinley ordered the call up of 125,000 troops. Rhode Island was directed by Secretary of War Russell A. Alger to raise a regiment of infantry from existing militia units in lieu of conscripting 720 individuals to augment the Regular Army as U.S. Volunteers by letter dated April 25, 1898. On May 2 the state established a camp site at Quonset Point in Rhode Island, and formally named the site "Camp Dyer" in honor of Governor Elisha Dyer, Jr. on May 7, 1898. The regiment began to muster until fully assembled between May 10 and 17, with Colonel Charles W. Abbot Jr., commanding. Initially the unit consisted of forty-six officers and 958 enlisted men. This regiment, the only infantry regiment raised on Rhode Island during the war, was constituted of several militia infantry units in Rhode Island as well as individual volunteers.

The unit was assigned to the 3rd Division, Second Corps and reported for duty at Camp Alger, Virginia, from late May. However the regiment and the rest of Second Corps left Camp Alger in early August 1898, due to a typhoid fever epidemic. The regiment relocated to another part of Virginia at Thoroughfare Gap in an attempted run from the virus. However, conditions in Thoroughfare Gap resulted in dysentery and malaria, and the unit eventually relocated to Camp Meade, Pennsylvania with the rest of Second Corps in August 1898. The overcrowded conditions forced the relocation of the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Division of Second Corps to Camp Fornance, South Carolina.

The regiment was mustered out of federal service on March 30, 1899 at Columbia, South Carolina. The unit returned to Providence and handed over colors to Governor Elisha Dyer after a parade past city hall on April 1, 1899. At the time of muster-out, the regiment included forty-five officers and 1,039 enlisted men. During its term of service, the unit lost eleven enlisted men who died from disease and one enlisted man who died as the result of an accident. Thirty-five more enlisted men were discharged for disability. Interestingly the unit also had thirteen enlisted men court-martialed and eighty-nine men deserted the regiment.

The regiment nicknamed itself the "Rough Walkers" which was inspired by Roosevelt's Rough Riders. Veterans of the regiment received an unofficial medal called the Rough Walker Medal.