At the end of 1831, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri put forward a bill authorizing President Jackson to organize a mounted ranger unit of volunteers for frontier defense.

[2] The decision to organize a volunteer battalion instead of a regular cavalry regiment, emanated from the prevalent attitudes of the ruling Democratic Party toward the United States Army.

Their mission was to support the Indian agents and negotiators under Henry Ellsworth that tried to mediate between the native population there and the members of the Five Civilized Tribes that had been removed beyond the Mississippi.

The rangers had revealed themselves as lacking in discipline, and their leather hunting shirts had become so soiled that citizens and Indians could not separate them from common militia.

When the Secretary of War, Lewis Cass, demonstrated that the battalion was more costly than a regular regiment of dragoons, the fate of the Mounted Rangers was sealed.