Jackson's Regiment

JACKSON'S REGIMENT. Henry Jackson of Massachusetts was appointed to command one of the sixteen "Additional Continental Regiments" authorized by Congress on 12 January 1777 as part of the army it wanted to raise for three years of service (or the duration of the war). Organized in the spring and summer of 1777 at Boston, the regiment consisted of seven companies, one of the more fully recruited of the additional regiments. On 9 April 1779 it was consolidated with two other additional continental regiments raised in Massachusetts, Colonel William Lee's, which had been raised in the eastern counties of the state, and Colonel David Henley's, which had been raised in eastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. Now a full regiment of nine companies, it was incorporated into the Massachusetts Line on 18 July 1780 and redesignated the Sixteenth Massachusetts Regiment on 24 July. The regiment was disbanded at New Windsor, New York, in the Hudson Highlands, at the end of its enlistment on 1 January 1781.

Because most of the infantrymen remaining in the Continental army were from Massachusetts, on 23 October 1783 Henry Jackson was authorized to combine them into a single regiment, known both as Jackson's Regiment and the First American Regiment. Disbanded on 20 June 1784, it was the last infantry regiment in the Continental army.

SEE ALSO Additional Continental Regiments; Jackson, Henry.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berg, Fred Anderson. Encyclopedia of Continental Army Units: Battalions, Regiments, and Independent Corps. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books, 1972.

Wright, Robert K., Jr. The Continental Army. Army Lineage Series. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1983.

                             revised by Harold E. Selesky