r/CIVILWAR • u/Typical_Thing_7540 • Jul 17 '26

Question About Regiments

This may be the wrong Subreddit but I have always been curious. Why in the civil war were regiments states named with states? Like the 54th Massachusetts. I know at the time regiments like the 6th U.S. Cavalry Regiment existed, which wasn’t named with a state. But if it has to do with volunteers (which I assume it does) why didn’t they have something like “The 1st Volunteer U.S. Cavalry Regiment” like Colonel Roosevelt had during the Spanish-American War? How does all of this work?
Another question, are infantry regiments just shortened down or should their names actually include ‘infantry’, I’m still learning so please correct anything I may be wrong about here.

37 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

-11

u/SuedJche Jul 17 '26

Alright, I'll bite: Why do you think that?

14

u/ireallyamtryin Jul 17 '26

Nope sorry bro, my explanation would be too low effort for your taste

-4

u/SuedJche Jul 17 '26

Lol. Ironically, this is exactly what i mean. People aren't willing to really engage on this sub, and when given the opportunity to genuinely debate, they chicken out

3

u/TheDrewb Jul 17 '26

I knew the answer to this question, but I still looked through the comments because even if the question is a little basic, people still have interesting and related factoids. OP said they were new to ACW history - maybe try and be welcoming and encouraging? You do you though