Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment - Fort Pitt and The Western Department

Fort Pitt and The Western Department

After recruitment of the three companies had been no more than partially completed, Rawlings' regiment set off for Fort Pitt, arriving there in late May 1779. The three companies consisted of about 100 enlisted men, well below the prescribed total of about 60 enlisted men per company in a Continental Army line infantry regiment in 1779. Moreover, a month after its arrival, the unit lost almost half of its troop strength because the three-year enlistment periods of those men who had joined the regiment during its organization in mid-1776 had terminated. To further complicate matters, Rawlings resigned his command of the regiment on June 2, primarily because of his frustration over not being able to fully rebuild the unit, and did not accompany his men. He remained the commandant of Fort Frederick and subsequently served as Deputy Commissary of Prisoners for Maryland. Capt. Alexander Lawson Smith also did not proceed to Fort Pitt with the riflemen. He likely stayed with the 4th Maryland Regiment of the Main Army in a continued attached capacity until Congress approved his resignation from "the regiment formerly Rawlins " in September 1780. The regiment was now commanded by senior captain Thomas Beall and later Capt. Adamson Tannehill, both of whom had been with the unit since its inception.

The Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment complemented the existing garrison at Fort Pitt: the 8th Pennsylvania and 9th (formerly 13th) Virginia Regiments. The men of these Pennsylvania and Virginia line infantry units had been recruited from the central and western frontier counties of the two states and were assigned to the army's Western Department while at Valley Forge, reflecting a clear logic on Washington's part. With the arrival of Rawlings' regiment, Western Department commander Col. Daniel Brodhead now led a 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, which included the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment, local militia, and volunteers to the upper waters of the Allegheny River in August and September 1779, where they destroyed the villages and crops of hostile Mingo and Munsee Indians. Brodhead's expedition was part of Washington's wide-ranging, coordinated offensive of the summer of 1779 that also included the larger, concurrent Sullivan Campaign led by Maj. Gen. John Sullivan and Brig. Gen. James Clinton against enemy Iroquois and Loyalist units in southern and western New York State. From mid-1779 until late 1780, however, the Maryland and Virginia Rifle Regiment was primarily deployed in detachments to support line infantry contingents 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.

Change in command of the regiment occurred for the third time in late 1780. Under continual pressure to maintain sufficient troop strength in the unit, regimental commander Capt. Thomas Beall ran afoul of army regulations and Western Department commander Brodhead by approving the enlistment of a British prisoner of war in February 1780. Beall tried to rectify his lapse in judgment by discharging the recruit, although after he had already been given his recruitment bounty and service clothes. On August 14, 1780, at Fort Pitt, Captain Beall was tried by court-martial, found guilty of "discharging a Soldier after having been duly inlisted and receiving his regimental cloathing through private and interested views thereby defrauding the United States," and on October 13, was dismissed from the service. Capt. Adamson Tannehill succeeded Beall as commander of the regiment for the remaining few months of the unit's existence.