History of the Militia and National Guard, John K. Mahon

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HISTORY OF THE MILITIA AND THE NATIONAL GUARD

John K. Mahon (1912-2004)
© 1983, John K. Mahon, used with permission.
Chapter One, The English Background
Chapter Two, Militia in the Colonies
Chapter Three, The American Revolution This file
Chapter Four, Militia in the Early National Period
Chapter Five, Jeffersonian Militia and the War of 1812
Chapter Six, Decline of the Militia; Rise of the Volunteers
Chapter Seven, Civil War
Chapter Eight, Reconstruction; Birth of the National Guard
Chapter Nine, The War with Spain
Chapter Ten, Reorganization, 1900-1916
Chapter Eleven, The National Guard in World War I
Chapter Twelve, The National Guard Between World Wars
Chapter Thirteen, World War II
Chapter Fourteen, The Immediate Post War Period
Chapter Fifteen, The Eisenhower Administration
Chapter Sixteen, The Turbulent 1960s
Chapter Seventeen, The Guard in the 1970s
Chapter Eighteen, Conclusion
Other unpublished dissertations of interest (The full text can be ordered from UMI Dissertation Services, 1-800-521-0600):
Mark Pitcavage, Ohio State, "An Equitable Burden: The Decline of State Militias, 1783-1858" (1995). UMI order no. 9612259.
Kenneth Otis McCreedy, U of Ca., Berkeley, "Palladium of Liberty: The American Military System, 1815-1861," (1991). UMI order no. 9228764.
Other more recent history:
Don Higginbotham, The Second Amendment in Historical Context,Constitutional Commentary, October, 1999.
Michael A. Bellesiles, "Suicide Pact: New Readings of the Second Amendment," Constitutional Commentary, October, 1999.
Saul Cornell, "Commonplace or Anarchronism: The Standard Model, the Second Amendment, and the Problem of History in contemporary Constitutional Theory," Constitutional Commentary, October, 1999.
Garry Wills, "To Keep and Bear Arms," The New York Review of Books, Sept. 21, 1995.
A recent collection of historical papers on the Second Amendment is published by the Chicago-Kent Law Review, Vol. 76, No. 1, 2000, "Symposium on the Second Amendment: Fresh Looks," articles by Bogus, Bellesiles, Rakove, Farber, Finkelman, Heyman, Dorf, Spitzer, and Uviller & Merkel.
Other history not mentioned or rarely mentioned by the gun lobby/libertarian pseudoscholars includes:
Jerry Cooper, The Rise of the National Guard (1997). Chapter 1 treats the period from colonial America to the Civil War.
Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army (1967). Weigley's theme is the dual system of citizen soldiers and professional army.
Dave R. Palmer, 1794: America, Its Army, and the Birth of the Republic (1994).
Lawrence Cress, Citizens in Arms (1982)
Lawrence Cress, "An Armed Community: The Origins and the Meaning of the Right to Bear Arms," J. Am Hist., 1984.
Leon Friedman, "Conscription and the Constitution", Mich. L. Rev., 1969.
Also, a very readable, informative, historically accurate perspective from a politician who is not a professional historian but who did spend twelve years on the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Gary Hart, The Minutemen (1998), chapter 4, "The Republic and the Militia"
Books can be ordered from Amazon.com on our Resources file.

CHAPTER THREE

The American Revolution

When General Thomas Gage reached Boston in May 1774 to become commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, the royal governor of Massachusetts ordered out two elite companies of the Boston militia and some standing militia companies to honor the new official. 1 But in the following months the power of the commander-in-chief, of the royal governor, and indeed of all the royal officials waned.

The militia officers generally were affluent and influential. Many of them, holding commissions from the Crown, were reluctant to sever ties with England. The major general commanding the Massachusetts militia and half the colonels of regiments were Tories. The same proportion existed throughout New England As the power of the royal officers waned, that of colonial institutions waxed, and local governments soon stripped the Tories of their commands. In addition, they restructured the militia system. Their purging and restructuring were revolutionary acts. The emerging patriot leadership— according to John Shy an outgrowth of the militia— enforced the boycott of British goods and identified and isolated loyalists. 2

The First Continental Congress, in existence only from September 5 to October 25, 1774, exhorted the colonial governments to bolster their militias. The Second Congress constructed a uniform table of organization, recommended that companies elect their own officers, that companies group themselves into regiments, and that the legislatures designate officers for the regiments. Power by this time resided largely with elected governors and legislatures and not with the Crown agents. Unfortunately, the militias directed by the

36 History of the Militia and the National Guard

governors and legislatures were too different from each other to be interchangeable. 3

Nevertheless, the colonies/states quickened militia preparations. Most of the governments attempted to enlarge their stocks of munitions. Colonials who continued to correspond with Englishmen inflated the war preparations in their letters. 4 "All the towns of the Province, Boston excepted," wrote one, "are at the desire of Congress exercising their militia every fair day, and are also chusing their own militia officers; another act of treason." 5 A second correspondent, asserting that there would be no shortage of arms for the Americans, described the prevailing mood as "The Rage Militaire." 6

The revolutionary government in Massachusetts directed all company officers to prepare one-third of their command to respond instantly to calls. Thus were created the Minute Man units, copied then by other colonies/states. Minute Men first came under fire at Lexington when Captain John Parker’s company stood in the way of the British march toward Concord to confiscate military stores. 7 Although Parker’s Minute Men fired the shots "heard round the world," they scarcely halted the march of the foe. At Concord, however, militia units— some of them with ancient lineages— lined the rise overlooking the British line of march. Behind them stood a company made up of old men and boys. Still farther behind were citizens who removed the stores the redcoats had come to confiscate. Foiled in their mission, the British began the return march to Boston, only to be hit by fusillades from behind every stone fence. This fire came not from organized militia but from dusters of enraged citizens. Had the marksmen been better organized, they might have destroyed the invading column. 8 As it was, a relief force had to come from Boston to rescue them. Lord Percy, commanding the relief was impressed by the Americans in arms: "Many of them concealed themselves in houses and advanced within ten yards to fire at me and other officers, tho they were mortally certain of being put to death themselves.. . . I never believed.. . that they would have attacked the King’s troops, or have the perseverance I found in them." 9

After Bunker Hill, General Thomas Gage wrote to Lord Dartmouth, secretary of state for the colonies, "Americans are not the despicable rabble too many supposed them to be . . . There is a military spirit . . . joined with common zeal and enthusiasm . . . The conquest of the country is not easy." 10 Unfortunately for the British cause, the earl of Dartmouth and others in high position continued to view the Americans as merely rabble in arms. They could not believe that an army in which a bookseller (Knox), a blacksmith (Greene), and a tavern keeper (Putnam) were generals needed to be taken seriously. 11

The American Revolution 37

After Lexington, at least 20,000 men from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut swiftly converged on Boston. Israel Putnam traveled one hundred miles in eighteen hours using the same and pausing to summon additional men along the way. But when the military situation at Boston settled into stalemate, this crowd dispersed as fast as it had formed. The General Court of Massachusetts called for the formation of a New England army, 30,000 strong, to serve the balance of 1775. No such number actually appeared, but who did were placed under the orders of Artemus Ward, a veteran of the Great War and commander of the Massachusetts contingent. The length of their service, longer than the traditional militia tour, was stipulated. Governor Trumbull of Connecticut wrote the citizen thought of his service as "purely voluntary; therefore the time of enlistment is out, he thinks himself not holden without further engagement . . . This is the genius and spirit of our people." 12

Even though Americans generally expected a short war, Congress felt the need for a semiregular force, free of the limitations of state armies and militia. Accordingly, it constituted twenty-six regiments to during 1776, subject to Congress and to the commanders appointed by Congress. Since much of the time Congress could not sustain its regiments, it promised to pay the costs ultimately if the states would meanwhile take care of them. To broaden support for the war effort, George Washington of Virginia was asked to take command of the total force. 13

Washington counted on the citizen soldiers present around Boston to enlist in these new Continental Regiments, but few did. These men viewed their connection as a contractual one, and having fulfilled one contract, they did not feel morally bound to enter into another one. But Washington ascribed to them a "dirty, mercenary spirit." How could they abandon the Cause when it needed them most? 14 Abandon it they did, and he was obliged to call for 7,000 militiamen to serve only until January 15, 1776. For him such troops were a last resort, "They come in," he wrote, "you cannot tell how, go you cannot tell when, and act you cannot tell where, consume your provisions, exhaust your stores, and leave you at last at a critical moment." 15 Yet it was the militia, however unreliable, that saw his army through 1775.

Massachusetts began to draft men in 1776, and the other states did so later. As in colonial times, men in favored social circumstances could escape the draft by paying a fine or by finding a substitute. Masters of indentured servants and owners of slaves could send their laborers as substitutes, and fathers could send their minor sons. In Northampton County, Pennsylvania, 54 percent of the enlisted men

38 History of the Militia and the National Guard

were substitutes for actual draftees. Thus, in the colonies as now the states the burden of compulsory military service fell most heavily on men at low social levels." 16

The laws and customs on which the power to draft rested, supported a militia system that was purely defensive and permitted only short tours of duty within the boundaries of the state. Yet militiamen did receive notices such as this one pladng them involuntarily in Continental service: "This is to inform you [that you] are drafted as one of the Continental men to go to George Washington." 17 Such conscription was illegal and could be practiced only because the men drafted were too poor or too ignorant of the law to contest being selected.

Some of the states impressed men who were not part of the militia, sweeping in free blacks, vagrants, and in some cases imprisoned felons. In South Carolina, a militiaman who mutinied could be sentenced to serve in the Carolina Continental Line Regiment for as long as one year. In general, persons with genuine religious scruples were not forced into service; they could pay a fine or secure a substitute. They could not, however, escape harsh criticism and sometimes violence, especially if the enemy was at the gate. 18 Not all Quakers avoided service; Nathanael Greene was "put from under the care of the Meeting," when he accepted a commission; while other Friends banded into their own companies where they responded to such commands as "Shoulder thy firelock!" 19

In every quarter the use of militia was essential to the continuation of the conflict. Major General Charles Lee defended Charleston, South Carolina, in 1776 with a mixed force of 2,000 state troops, 2,700 local militia, and about 900 Continentals. 20 At around the same time, Congress resolved to call upon Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey for 13,800 militiamen to serve alongside the regulars and upon Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland for a highly mobile force of 10,000. 21 Accordingly, when the British finally appeared from Halifax in June 1776 to attack New York, Washington was able to assemble 28,000 men, 19,000 of them were either short term militiamen or recruits with less experience than the militia had. Washington was defeated on Long Island on 27 August 1776, whereupon some three-quarters of the militia dribbled away, "dismayed," in Washington’s words, "intractable, and impatient’ to return to their homes. 22

Throughout 1776 there was an American army only because there was a militia system. To be sure, the commander-In-chief could never be certain what quality of performance he could expect from the citizen soldiers the system produced When Washington was forced

The American Revolution 39

out of New York and into New Jersey, the men once more began to sidle away, some of them because their terms had expired, others because they deserted. In the northern American army, five-month men completed their tours and went home, leaving Newport, Rhode Island, dangerously undermanned All in all, as 1776 ended, the American cause seemed to be in nearly fatal decline: Newport and New York were enemy-occupied, Philadelphia was undefended, and New Jersey was overrun. General Greene blamed the loss ofJersey, the bread basket of the Cause, on shortcomings of the Jersey militia. 23 The heady battles of Trenton and Princeton bolstered faltering can resolve. For a time afterward, militia flocked to Washington’s army, then as quickly began to drift off home. With whatever force he could hold together, Washington bad to wait to find Out where the British might strike in the central area. While he waited, the largest British army fielded so far, commanded by Major General John Burgoyne, commenced a ponderous advance southward from Canada. The local militia might have failed altogether had not an atrocity committed by Indians in British pay stimulated them. Washington wrote to New England governors asking for help against a foe who used savages to do his fighting.

When the New England militia responded en masse, New Yorkers also began to stir. Seriously weakened, Burgoyne’s column halted, foiled by the wilderness and the swarming of the militia. "The civilian population," Don Higginbotham wrote, "gradually [changedj into a loosely arrayed body of irregulars of the sort unknown in the Old World" 24 As seen by British Sergeant Lamb, "Numerous parties of American militia swarmed around the little adverse army like birds of prey." 25 That little adverse army surrendered on October 17, 1777, and one of the mercenaries among the surrendered forces wrote of the conquerors: "Not one of them was properly uniformed, but each man had on the clothes in which he goes into the field. . . but they all stood like soldiers, erect. . . so still that we were amazed. . . and we were all surprised at the sight of such finely build people.... Most of the colonels and other officers were in their ordinary clothes." 26

While the northern army struggled against Burgoyne, Washington faced General Sir William Howe in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Howe Settled himself for a comfortable winter in that city, with 9,000 troops as an outpost at Germantown. Washington attacked Germantown on October 4, 1977, using four columns in an elaborate converging tactic, too elaborate, indeed, for the two columns that were made up of militia. Although unable to expel the British from Germantown, the American force came close enough to a signal victory to shake the enemy’s confidence. 27 Nevertheless, Howe remained cozy in the city

40 History of the Militia and the National Guard

while the American army suffered at Valley Forge close by. Most of the militiamen went home and did not receive the instruction given by Baron von Steuben during that bitter winter.

Burgoyne’s surrender had convinced the French government of the value of an open alliance with the United States, entered into in February 1778. When this took place, the British shifted their strategic focus southward. Late in 1778, they captured Savannah and brought Georgia back under their domination. For the second time during the war they made Charleston their target and were able after a six-week siege to enter it on May 12,1780. Half the surrendered American force of 5,000 was militia, most of whom took the oath of loyalty to the king. 28

During the southern campaigns, the British high command relied too much on Tories, individual and banded together in militia units. Tories were cheaper than regulars or mercenaries. Drawn by the enthusiasm of southern loyalists Tories from New York and New Jersey traveled south to join the British forces there. From the southernmost of the erstwhile colonies, Florida, raiders for the British cause marauded into Georgia and South Carolina. 29 At the Battle of King’s Mountain, October 7, 1780, one thousand Tories constituted the bulk of the British defenders. They were surrounded by patriot citizen soldiers, swarming as they had done around Burgoyne’s army in 1777, and were overwhelmed.

Brigadier General Daniel Morgan, a veteran handier of citizen soldiers, returned to active duty when the enemy came south. Morgan achieved almost the perfect use of militia at the Battle of Cowpens on January 17, 1781. In an open area, with the French Broad River at his rear, he formed his 1,040 men into two lines with the irregulars in the front line where they had to receive the initial shock The reasons he gave for the field he chose and the formation he took were that with the river behind them the militiamen had no avenue of retreat, and he needed his regulars as a steady reserve in the rear rank. He had a way with citizen soldiers, and moving among them man to man, he exhorted them to stand firm for two volleys and then run for safety behind the Continental line. As the 400 militiamen believed in Morgan, they did as he requested; but they did more. Once secure behind the second line they reformed and at a critical moment swept around the protective line to attack the right flank of the enemy. At the same time a small detachment of dragoons hit the left flank, resulting in a nearly perfect double envelopment Of the 1,100 men in the foe’s detachment; 110 died and702 were made prisoners, at a cost of twelve American killed and sixty wounded. 30

Daniel Morgan had risen to command at Cowpens from the lowest

The American Revolution 41

ranks. As a wagoner in the British service during the Great War for Empire, he had had his back bloodied for the violation of orders. Not motivated to stand and die for the British cause in the midst of the American wilderness, he had, on the fatal ground of General Braddock’s disaster, cut the traces of his team and ridden the horses at full gallop to safety. Standing well over six feet and weighing about 200 pounds, all of it bone and muscle, he derived some authority from his size. He was also skillful with a rifle, and when Congress constituted ten rifle companies to make up the first Continental regiment, he was captain of one company, whereupon he marched his men the 600 miles to Boston in three weeks. He distinguished himself, above everyone else, before Quebec in December 1775. Captured there, he was exchanged in time to give indispensable aid in the final battles that forced General Burgoyne to surrender in the fall of 1777. By now he was colonel, but he was forced to drop out due to crippling arthritis. When the British moved southward, Morgan reentered active duty, this time as a brigadier general of Continentals. He had had so little schooling that he read with difficulty, wrote nearly illiterately, and could hardly add and subtract, but he had common sense, untutored intelligence, and experience in what citizens turned soldiers were capable of in combat In other than American circumstances, he might never have had a chance to reach star rank.

Morgan’s tactics were so successful that Nathanael Greene, Continental commander in the south, tried to use the same at Guilford Court House two months later, with much less success; still, he inflicted casualties which the invaders, unable to secure replacements, could not afford. Numbers of citizen soldiers associated themselves with the partisan leaders Thomas Sumter, Andrew Pickens, Francis Marion, and William Moultrie. These, and Greene’s main army, operating in a wary coalition, gradually nudged Cornwallis out of the deep south into Virginia where he could combine with other British troops and gain the aid of the British navy. But at Yorktown, a mixed force of 5,700 Continentals, 7,800 French soldiers, and 3,200 militiamen encircled Cornwallis’s force by land while the French fleet closed his access to the sea. Unable to escape, the cornered force surrendered on October 19, 1781. 31

In warfare with the Indians, at this time a biproduct of the Revolution, the citizens soldiers were not generally successful As early as 1774, major combats in western Virginia revealed too little cohesion among the irregular troops at a heavy cost in white casualties. 32 Maximum success for the Indians came during the summer and fall of 1778, when British-led redmen laid waste the Wyoming area in northern Pennsylvania and the Cherry Valley in New

42 History of the Militia and the National Guard

York Since the militia seemed paralyzed, General Washington was obliged to make a substantial detachment from the Continental Army and sent it, under the command of Major General John Sullivan, to break the fighting power of the Iroquois Sullivan achieved that objective in l779. 33

Conflict with the Indians did not stop after Yorktown. Full of hatred, Pennsylvania militiamen in 1782 massacred ninety defenseless Christian Indians encamped at Gnadenhutten. During the following summer when Colonel William Crawford led a militia column into the same area, the Indians, seeking revenge, saw their chance, and encircled the white formation. Crawford pleaded with his men to stick together or face certain doom, but individualists first and soldiers second, most of them banded into small detachments and tried to escape. A majority of them were captured and tortured to death. Crawford himself was broiled alive on a slow fire in revenge for Gnadenhutten. Even Daniel Boone was unsuccessful. At Blue Licks in mid-September 1783, he placed a sizeable force of Kentucky militia in a strong defense position. They were attacked by 200 Indians directed by some British rangers and were routed in five minutes, suffering heavy casualties. 34

Although almost all combatants started as citizen soldiers, those who served long terms in the Continental Army developed the skills of regular& When in 1777 Continentals enlisted for three years, certain of the civilian revolutionaries thought they saw developing an instrument the British experience had taught them to hate: a standing army. Samuel Adams expressed their fear:

Samuel Adams and other revolutionaries like him did not want any sort of power, least of all military, concentrated in whatever central government was to replace the British, whose centralized authority they had struggled to throw off. Sovereignty, they were sure, rested in the individual states. Thus, Governor John Houstoun considered the Continentals to be intruders into his state of Georgia. All four of the great partisan leaders in the southern campaigns worked reluctantly with central military authority. Sumter resigned rather than accept subordination to a Continental officer. To the north,John Stark,

The American Revolution 43

who had dropped out because of the intrusion of central authority, took leadership again to oppose Burgoyne’s advance, but after the surrender at Saratoga he marched his men back to New Hampshire than take orders from a Continental officer. In all the states, militia officers resisted being subordinated to Continentals and endlessly bickered over relative rank. 36 Most of the states, jealous of their sovereignty, created small armies strictly for state defense. Although the Continental commanders could never be sure of the cooperation of these state forces, they did have the of parts of them in certain critical movements. Washington had detachments from New York and Connecticut with him at Yorktown, and George Rogers Clark counted 200 men from the Virginia army as a necessary part of his force used to conquer the French settlements in the far-off Mississippi Valley. 37

Of all types of soldiers, the militiamen most nearly conformed to the image of the citizen soldier. Moreover, the militia system was the source of the other soldier types. Most of the Continental officers came out of it; examples are John Sullivan, sometime major in New Hampshire; Benedict Arnold, captain in the Connecticut Governor’s Guards; and Benjamin Lincoln, colonel of a Massachusetts regiment, commanded by his father before him. 38

In the fall of 1776 George Washington wrote privately about the militia: "The dependence which Congress have placed upon (them) . . . I fear will totally ruin our cause. Being subject to no control themselves, they introduce disorder among the troops . . . while change in living brings on sickness; this makes them impatient to get home . . . and introduces abominable desertions." 39 Nathanael Greene expressed much the same view but stressed different reasons why militiamen could not be relied on. "People coming from home with all the tender feelings of domestic life are not sufficiently fortified with natural courage to stand the shocking scenes of war. To march over dead men, to hear without concern the groans of the wounded, I say few men can stand such scenes unless steeled by habit and fortified by military pride." 40 Greene felt that militia and Continentals did not operate well together, and when possible, he used militiamen in small detachments in which he considered them to be most effective.

Both Washington and Greene knew they had to depend on militia and did so, but they were less tolerant of it than some officers of foreign extraction. Charles Lee, who had been a British officer before becoming a Continental, wrote a pamphlet to show the superiority of American militiamen over British regulars. Unlike Greene, he thought the irregulars worked best when associated with Continentals. 41 Horatio Gates, also commissioned in the British army, had confidence

44 History of the Militia and the National Guard

in militia and skill in using it. At the Battle of Camden on August 16, 1780, he entrusted the entire left side of his line to militiamen from Virginia and North Carolina, who unfortunately collapsed when attacked with bayonets. 42 LaFayette spoke for the American militia at every opportunity, and his countryman Rochambeau directed his men to share with them. 43

The militia was, obviously, unpredictable. A call for it might produce more men than could be supported, or a mere trickle, or no men at all. This being so, commanders found it difficult to plan their moves in advance. Once the troops assembled, the uncertainty was by no means dispelled, for there was a constant ebb and flow as men came and went. It can be said that the American commanders, in trying to use efficiently a wildly fluctuating number of men, faced at least as difficult a problem as did their opponents, who had to try to conquer rebel armies, then overrun and occupy a vast hostile terrain with an insufficient force.

John Shy has identified three missions carried out by the militia without which independence could not have been won:

1. Militia controlled communities, holding them to the patriot cause, either through indoctrination or if necessary by intimidation.

2. Militia provided "on short notice, large numbers of armed men for brief periods of emergency service."

3. Using the militia system, authorities bribed or drafted enough men each year to keep the Continental Army alive. 44

Men from the lowest layers of society made up part of the revolutionary military force, but they were by no means a majority. Washington and Congress accepted the recruitment of Negroes— the layer farthest down of all— because of the never-ending need for men in the ranks. Low-status whites came in, but yeomen and artisans also entered the ranks. By and large, the enlisted men of the Revolutionary Army were not the castoffs and conscripts characteristic of European forces. What the Americans fielded was unique for the end of the eighteenth century it was a citizen army. This new institution was the product of a culture that rejected the idea that the soldier was in a caste different from his countrymen. Later in the life of the nation, the enlisted soldier in peacetime sometimes resembled his low-caste counterpart in Europe, but in wartime the forces always filled up with substantial citizens turned soldiers for a time. 45

George Washington emerged from the Revolution with a worldwide reputation. Like his fellow Virginian Daniel Morgan, he had

The American Revolution 45

served in the Great War for Empire but, unlike Morgan, always in positions of command, at least of Virginia militia. Douglas Southall Freeman describes Washington at the time of his resignation from the Virginia militia in 1758 as humorless, ambitious, obstinant, acquisitive, suspicious and too sensitive, not qualities one would look for to make a man a general. But by the time the Congress offered him the Continental command eighteen years later, he had mastered the least attractive of these characteristics simply by the thorough performance of common daily duties. Although never close to his men in spirit, and more often than not critical of the militia, he never left them physically during eight and one-half years of grueling service, he was with the troops constantly, except for ten days at Mount Vernon. His unfailing presence, his imposing bearing, coupled with unflagging good manners and endurance, seemed to inspire both Continentals and militia to do their best. 46

NOTES, Chapter 3

1. Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution, 2 vols. (Macmillan, 1952), pp. 3, 4. text@note1

2. Ibid., p. 30; Don Higginbotham, The War of American Independence (Macmillan, 1971), P. 273; Earl M. Wheeler, "The Role of the North Carolina Militia in the Beginning of the American Revolution" (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Tulane Univ., 1969); John Shy, "Mobilizing Armed Forces in the American Revolution," in The American Revolution: A Heritage of Change, John Parker and Carol Urness, eds. (Univ. of Minnesota, 1973), pp. 96-106. text@note2

3. Wheeler, "North Carolina Militia," p. 118; Luther L. Gobbel, "Militia in North Carolina in Colonial and Revolutionary Times," Historical Papers, Trinity College Historical Society (Series 13, Durham, 1919), p. 51; David W. Cole, "Organization and Administration of the South Carolina Militia System, 1670-1763" (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Univ. of South Carolina, 1948), pp. 94, 103, 105; James B. Deerin, "Our Militia in the Revolutionary War," National Guardsman, XXX (Aug.-Sept. 1976), p.3. text@note3

4. Ibid.; Higginbotham, Independence, pp. 22,46; Wheeler, "North Carolina Militia," p. 50; Ward, Revolution, p. 20; Richard Henry Marcus, "The Militia of Colonial Connecticut, 1639-1775" (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Colorado, 1965), p. 352. text@note4

5. "From Boston, 8 Dec. 1774," Margaret Wheeler Willard, ed., Letters on the American Revolutlon 1774 -1776 (first published in 1925, reissued by Kennikat Press, 1968), p. 26. text@note5

6. "Private gentleman in Phila. to a London Merchant, 6 May 1775," ibid., p. 101. text@note6

7. Deerin, "Our Militia," p. 3; Wheeler, "North Carolina Militia," pp. 115, 120; Cole, "South Carolina Militia," p. 94; Ward, Revolution, pp. 30, 36, 38. text@note7

8. Ibid., pp. 40, 41, 46; Higginbotham, Independence, p. 63. text@note8

9. Quoted in Deerin, "Our Militia," p. 7. text@note9

10. Ibid., p. 11. text@note10

11. Ward, Revolution, p. 130; Higginbotham, Independence, p. 58. text@note11