Samuel Ringgold was a talented
officer
who is generally regarded as
the ``Father of the Flying
Artillery.''
He raised the equipment and
training levels of American light
artillery to high standards and
demonstrated their effectiveness
at the Battle of Palo Alto during
the Mexican-American War.
Ironically,
he died in his first engagement,
a victim of Mexican
artillery
fire.
Ringgold was probably
born
in Hagerstown, Maryland around 1800, the
son of a local politician. He
attended
the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point, graduated fifth in
his class of 23 in 1818, and was posted
as a second lieutenant with the
Second U.S. Artillery. After a stint
of garrison duty at Fort Mifflin,
Pennsylvania, Ringgold was chosen
to serve as an aide to Gen.
Winfield
Scott for three years. He rose
to first lieutenant in the Third
U.S. Artillery in 1822 and was selected
to attend the Artillery School
for Practice at Fort Monroe, Virginia.
He then alternated between
garrison
and ordnance duty until 1836,
when he participated in Florida's
Second Seminole War. There, he gained
promotion to brevet major for
bravery,
but fell ill due to the climate.
Ringgold was then sent overseas
to study artillery at the famous Ecole
Polytechnique in Paris and its
English counterpart, the Military Institution,
at Woolwich. By this time,
he had acquired a reputation as an intelligent
and innovative officer. For this
reason, following his return to America
in 1838, Secretary of War Joel
Poinsett directed him to organize and
equip a battery of light or
``flying''
artillery.
The U.S. Army had been
experimenting
with light artillery since 1808,
when a company was formed
on the order of Secretary of War Henry
Dearborn. Just prior to the War
of 1812 a regiment of light artillery
was raised under the command of
Col. Moses Porter but, due to shortages
of equipment and horses, it
functioned
mostly as an infantry unit.
The regiment was disbanded by
Congress
in 1821 and, although one company
of the four remaining regiments
was theoretically light artillery,
they were usually trained
and equipped as field batteries. Ringgold,
therefore, faced an
imposing
task of creating an elite fighting force
from scratch. He began by
redesigning
technical features of the guns
employed, including the elevating
screw, the firing mechanism, and
the carriage itself. Hereafter,
gun crews would be individually mounted
and no longer restricted to
riding
on the limbers. Ringgold also insisted
on high levels of discipline and
relentlessly trained the men under
his command. Consequently,
Company
C of the Third U.S. Artillery became
a showpiece unit whose
parade-ground
displays impressed congressmen
and attracted recruits.
Eventually,
Congress approved funding for
three additional flying batteries.
Ringgold's expertise in
artillery
extended beyond materials. In 1840,
the War Department
authorized
adoption of Instruction for Field Artillery,
Horse and Foot, a French
artillery manual translated by Capt. Robert
Anderson. Ringgold, however,
preferred
the English system for technical
reasons and suggested modifying
Anderson's text for light artillery
use. In 1843, as part of an
artillery
review board, he then composed
a tactical manual entitled
Instruction
for Field Artillery. This text
was an amalgam of the best of the
British and French systems, and
it was officially adopted by the
army in 1845. In 1841, he also introduced
a new saddle and bridle
arrangement
for cavalry and artillery horses,
the so-called ``Ringgold
saddle,'' parts of which remained in use
until 1885. Having improved guns,
their crews, and their deployment,
Ringgold elevated the
American
light artillery to among the world'
s finest. When the
Mexican-American
War erupted in 1846, he was determined
to demonstrate their
effectiveness
in battle.
In the summer of 1846,
Ringgold
accompanied the army of Gen. Zachary
Taylor during the first maneuvers
in southern Texas against Mexican
forces. On May 8, the Americans
encountered a larger force under Gen.
Mariano Arista at Palo Alto and
immediately gave battle. Prior to
engaging the Mexicans, Taylor
expressed
his doubts about the effectiveness
of light artillery, but Ringgold
prevailed on him for a chance to
prove himself. Galloping swiftly
toward the enemy to get close range,
his gunners cut swathes
through
the ranks of the densely packed Mexican
infantry. Their fire proved so
heavy and devastating that Arista's
army retreated with a loss of 257
men, almost all of them killed by
Ringgold's batteries. Taylor's
outnumbered infantry was hardly engaged,
losing only five killed and
43 wounded. However, while directing
the fire of his guns, Ringgold
was shot through the legs by a Mexican
cannonball and fatally wounded.
When an aide ran up to help, he gasped,
``Don't stay with me; you
have work to do. Go ahead!'' Ringgold lingered
for three days before dying on
May 11, 1846, the first American hero
and the first West Point fatality
of the Mexican-American War.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Dillon, Lester R., American
Artillery
in the Mexican War, 1846-1847,
1975; French, Samuel G.,
Two Wars, Mexican and Confederate, 1901;
Houston, Donald F., ``The Role
of Artillery in the Mexican War,''
Journal of the West 11 (1972):
273-284; Stevens, Peter F., ``The Proving
Ground,'' American History
Illustrated
23 (1988): 38-44; Downey, Fairfax,
The Sound of the Guns: The
Story of American Artillery, 1956; Peterson,
Charles J., Military Heroes
of the War with Mexico, with a Narrative
of the War, 1849; Peterson,
Harold
L., Roundshot and Rammers, 1969;
Robinson, Fayette, An Account of
the Organization of the Army of the
United States, 2 vols., 1848;
Wynne,
James, Memoir of Major Samuel
Ringgold, United States Army,
1847.
Author not available, Samuel
Ringgold.
, American Military Leaders, 01-01-2001.