The Army’s Oldest Division?

Recently, a plaque was added to the row of unit tributes at the National Museum of the United States Army, highlighting the service and sacrifice of the 28th Infantry Division. Alongside dozens of other markers to historic units, this plaque proudly proclaimed the 28th the “Army’s Oldest Division.” While this title is often repeated around the Division, this claim made in granite at Fort Belvoir caused somewhat of a stir online. A few posters asked, "How is the 28th Division the Army’s oldest?”

The Army maintains stringent guidelines for tracing and determining the official history of organizations. Historians track the history of individual units through orders and reports and capture every piece of a unit's story in its Lineage and Honors. Often described as a combination of a birth certificate and a resume, every MTOE unit in the Army has a Lineage and Honors, which records the organization, force structure changes, deployments, and commendations of a unit over time. For the 28th Infantry Division, the founding date of our organization is listed as 12-20 March 1879.

A list of Division birthdays and unit days on the website of the U.S. Army Center of Military History’s website shows the birthday or founding date of all active Divisions in the U.S. Army today. Following the 28th Division in founding date are the 1st Infantry Division (June 1917), 2d Infantry Division (October 1917), and 3d Infantry Division (November 1917). So how is the "Iron Division" nearly 40 years older than the other oldest Divisions in the Army?

Prior to World War I, the Regular Army rarely operated above the regimental level as a tactical or administrative organization. In times of war, notably the American Civil War and Spanish-American War, the Army raised brigades, divisions, corps, and field armies. However, these were always considered temporary formations, and the Army did not consider there to be any historical continuity from one conflict to another. It wasn't until the aftermath of World War I that the Regular Army preserved the battlefield accomplishments of units at the Division level. The 1st Expeditionary Division, formed as a provisional unit for service in France in 1917, remained a permanent part of the Regular Army’s force structure postwar, eventually becoming today’s 1st Infantry Division of Fort Carson, CO, as did many of the Regular Army’s other combat divisions.

So then, how was the 28th Division formed in 1879? Like the Regular Army, the Pennsylvania National Guard had struggled with the issue of temporary and weak structural organization since the Civil War. For over ten years, force structure in the NGP ebbed and flowed, shrinking and expanding as units came and went. Enlistment numbers surged and then dropped for a variety of social, political, and economic reasons. All of this would change dramatically in 1877.

That year labor protests erupted across the nation, with strikes related to the railroad industry exploding into violence between workers, big business, and state agencies from Philadelphia to Chicago. In Pennsylvania, Governor John Hartranft, a Medal of Honor recipient and former Militia Officer, called upon the NGP to help suppress violence and protests in Pittsburg, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and elsewhere across the state. The performance of the NGP was inconsistent at best. Some units failed to turn out for duty, others met protestors and crowds with gunfire. In many cases, bloated staff organizations produced a preponderance of officers on scene with few soldiers able to carry out the needed actions.

NGP leaders, like General James Latta, and Pennsylvania Legislators saw the need for a change, and in June of 1878, passed an act calling for the reorganization of the entire state National Guard into a streamlined, single Division. This act would cut unnecessary officer billets, combine small units into larger formalized regiments and brigades, and encourage longer and more formalized enlistment periods for recruits. Upon leaving the Governorship in 1879, Hartranft returned to the National Guard as a Major General and, alongside General Latta, helped reorganize the NGP into this single-division structure.

Between the 12th and 20th of March 1879, these Generals' efforts, along with guard members' work from Private to Colonel, rebirthed the NGP as "The Pennsylvania Division" or, more formally, Headquarters, Division of the National Guard of Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth would offer the Division for Federal service in the Spanish-American War less than a decade later, but only individual regiments were accepted from the National Guard by Washington. In the years after, the NGP operated as a division, with annual maneuvers, division staff training, and guidance from Regular Army advisors who regularly remarked on the professionalism of the organization.

In 1916, the Division would finally see its first call up as a unit, mustering in as the "7th Division” for service on the Mexican Border, one of just a handful of divisions composed from a single state. Just a few months after returning from El Paso, it would be called back into service, sent to Camp Hancock, Georgia, and redesignated as the 28th Division, part of the American Expeditionary Force. In France, it earned the moniker "Iron Division" and the special designation "Keystone Division," demonstrating its origin as the Pennsylvania Division.

Since 1879, the 28th Infantry Division, under various titles, has earned its place in Army history. From the Marne to the sands of the Global War on Terror, it has shown that Pennsylvania Guard Soldiers will answer the call wherever and whenever. No matter what they are called to do, they will honor the title of "The Army's Oldest Division."

Unit History 101: Understanding Your Lineage and Honors, (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 2024), 3.

Lineage and Honors, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 28th Infantry Division, Dated 23 September 2024, U.S. Army Center of Military History, https://history.army.mil/Unit-History/Lineage-and-Honors-Information/Division-and-Combined-Arms/

“Army Division Birthdays/Unit Days,” U.S. Army Center of Military History, https://history.army.mil/Unit-History/Organizational-History-Program/

John B Wilson, Maneuver and Firepower: The Evolution of Divisions and Separate Brigades, (U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1998), 41-42.

Lineage and Honors, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Infantry Division, Dated 7 September 2001, U.S. Army Center of Military History, https://history.army.mil/Unit-History/Lineage-and-Honors-Information/Division-and-Combined-Arms/

28th Infantry (Keystone) Division: 125 Years of Service (Nashville, TN: Turner Publishing, 2005), 12, 15.

Annual Report of the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania for the Year 1879 (State Publisher: Harrisburg, 1880), 1-7.

Annual Report of the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania 1898 (Harrisburg: Wm. Stanley Ray State Printer, 1900), 4; Annual Report of the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania 1890 (Harrisburg: B. F. Myers State Printer, 1891), 217.

The Twenty-Eighth Division: Pennsylvania’s Guard in the World War, Vol. V (Pittsburgh: 28th Division Publishing Co., 1924).