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The 1792 reorganization of the United States Army into the Legion of the United States marked a significant transformation in the structure of American military forces. Designed for the exigencies of American conditions, the Legion represented an innovative experiment in combined arms warfare. This article examines the roots of the legionary concept, from the ancient Romans to eighteenth-century European military theorists, and suggests that the structure of the Legion of the United States may have been based on the writings of Colonel Henry Bouquet, a noted veteran of the Indian frontier.
ON 27 December 1792, President George Washington radically altered the structure of American military forces by recasting the United States Army into the Legion of the United States. The reorganization, designed by Secretary of War Henry Knox, abandoned the traditional regimental system in favor of a flexible, combined-arms force tailored for American conditions in general, and those of Indian warfare in particular. Although the history of the Legion and its victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (20 August 1794) are well known, its origins are somewhat obscure. Many authors, including Russell Weigley, Armstrong Starkey, Francis Paul Prucha, William Ganoe, Wiley Sword, James Jacobs, David Palmer, and Fairfax Downey, have commented on the Legion's pedigree, but no one has fully explained why the Legion was organized the way it was.1 This article reviews some of the theories that have been put forward regarding the genesis of the Legion and suggests a new hypothesis linking the organization to the writings of Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss officer who served in the British army along the western frontier during the late 1750s and early 1760s.
Much of the historiography of the Legion of the United States has focused on its name. One theory, advanced by Ganoe, Marcus Cunliffe, and Edwin Hoyt, is that Knox chose to call the nation's armed forces a legion instead of an army in order to mollify Republicans who opposed the creation of any form of "standing army."2 Although there is some merit to this explanation, it is unlikely that anyone would have been deceived by such sophistry. An army, by any other name, is still an army. Moreover, Congress approved the increase in military manpower upon which the Legion...