Regular Army (United States)
The Regular Army of the United States was and is the successor to the Continental Army as the country's permanent, professional military establishment. Even in modern times the professional core of the United States Army continues to be called the Regular Army. From the time of the American Revolution until after the Spanish-American War, the small Regular Army of the United States was supported by State militias and volunteer regiments organized by States but thereafter controlled by federal authorities and generals in time of war. These volunteer regiments came to be called United States Volunteers (USV) in contrast to the Regular United States Army (USA). During the American Civil War, about 97 per cent of the Union Army was United States Volunteers. In contemporary use, the term Regular Army refers to the full-time active component of the United States Army, as distinguished from the Army Reserve and the Army National Guard.
The American military system which developed from the combination of the professional, national Continental Army, the State militias and volunteer regiments of the American Revolutionary War, and the similar post-Revolutionary War American military organization under the Militia Act of 1792, provided a basis for the United States Army's organizations, with only minor changes, until the creation of the modern National Guard in 1903. The Militia Act provided for the use of volunteers who could be used anywhere in time of war in addition to the State militias who were restricted to local use within their States for short periods of time. Even today's professional United States Army, which is augmented by the Army Reserve and Army National Guard has a similar system of organization with a permanent, professional core and additional units which can be called upon in time of war or emergency.
Read more about Regular Army (United States): Continental Army, Early American Army, War of 1812, Seminole Wars, Mexican-American War, Civil War, World War I, Interwar Years, World War II, Post-war Years
Famous quotes containing the words regular and/or army:
“It was inspiriting to hear the regular dip of the paddles, as if they were our fins or flippers, and to realize that we were at length fairly embarked. We who had felt strangely as stage-passengers and tavern-lodgers were suddenly naturalized there and presented with the freedom of the lakes and woods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)