"Charles Royster on the Militia" Topic

Royster's acclaimed study A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and the American Character 1776-1783 is a classic study of the period and contains much useful information. The following material on the use (or uselessness) of the militia is key to understanding why the Continental Army was always understrength and had to use the militia in the field and on the battlefield.

-General Charles Lee began the 'discussion' in 1774 and 1775 by praising the militia that the militia 'could become a formidable infantry.' He changed his tune drastically the next year at New York, commenting that 'no account' should be given to the Minutemen. And he also stated that if he had known better, he would have prevented them from joining the army. He became a firm supporter of regular troops to conduct the war.-41.

In 1777 when it was time to begin recruiting, those citizens who did not want to join the militia call out, looked for substitutes to hire to replace them.-65

Trenton and Princeton were 'fought primarily by the Continental Army. And despite plundering in New Jersey by the British and German troops, the militia response was less than enthusiastic.-111

Nine months after Trenton, Benjamin Rush wrote 'The militia began, and I sincerely hope the militia will end, the present war. I should despair of our cause if our country contained 60,000 men abandoned enough to enlist for 3 years or during the war.'-115.

In New York and New Jersey in 1777-1782 as well as in the Carolinas and Georgia in 1780-1782 'an intermittent, vicious vendetta war' was waged between Loyalists and rebels, and a good portion of this was because of personal differences. The people waging this internecine warfare 'were usually civilians or irregular forces' conducting 'reprisal killings.' General Greene remarked 'The Whigs and Tories persecute each other, with little less than savage fury. There is nothing but murders and devastations in every quarter.'-277.

So say there is no militia. Who provides local security?

'local security' for what?

Apparently there was little or no 'local security' in the Carolinas and Georgia in 1780-1782 because of the bloody internecine warfare, raiding, and settling of old scores going on.

Apparently there was little or no 'local security' during the British raids in Virginia in 1780 and 1781.

Apparently there is no "local security" in your thinking.

Who deals with disaffection, including Loyalists, and draft dodgers and resistors? Who catches Continental deserters? Who enforces the draft laws?

THAT sort of local security. Stop dodging, you are bright enough to know what is being asked. The breakdown of order as in the Carolinas was the exception. And in fact there WAS resistance to the British invasions, from militia. somewhat coordinated. The British controlled where their troops were, only. Their invasions were raids, because they could not occupy the territory permanently in the face of local militia resistance.

This, from the Virginia Places website, is pretty accurate:

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Leslie's Raid in 1780

Loyalists in Virginia and enslaved people seeking to escape to British lines were pleased when Major General Alexander Leslie sailed into the Chesapeake Bay with 2,200 men on October 20, 1780.

The last British forces in the state had both arrived and departed in May 1779. That raid, led by Commodore George Collier and Major General Edward Mathew, destroyed supplies at Suffolk and the Gosport Shipyard at Portsmouth, but left after two weeks. Without a permanent British base in Virginia, the rebels dominated the region and suppressed their opponents.

The purpose of Leslie's raid was similar to that of the Collier-Mathew Raid. Virginia was a source of men and supplies to the Continental Army fighting in New York and in the Carolinas. Around New York City, George Washington and General Henry Clinton were in a stalemate. In the Carolina's, however, Lord Cornwallis was struggling to establish Loyalist control. Whenever his soldiers left an area, rebels regained control over the countryside and threatened his outposts. Lord Cornwallis lacked the resources to implement the "southern strategy." He could conquer the region, but he needed to occupy it in order to maintain British control.

General Leslie was supposed to sail up the James River and capture Petersburg and Richmond, destroying the central supply depots and diverting reinforcements headed to General Nathaniel Green in North Carolina. After landing at Portsmouth, Leslie discovered that the Loyalist support in Virginia was weaker than expected, while the Virginia militia was stronger than expected.

He also realized that sailing up the James River required a local pilot, and could not get one. Leslie decided to ignore the plans developed in New York City, and to use the mobility provided by his warships to raid just coastal areas.

Governor Thomas Jefferson still feared a raid deep into the interior of Virginia, in order to free 800 British soldiers who had been captured at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. They were imprisoned in the Albemarle Barracks near Charlottesville, so Jefferson shipped them further away from the coastline to Maryland. He left the Hessian prisoners in their Albemarle Barracks, assuming General Leslie would not risk a long-distance raid to free them.

Jefferson also moved supplies inland, though Leslie was able to seize and destroy significant amounts of material at Suffolk, Newport News, and Hampton. General Henry Clinton could have chosen to reinforce Leslie and enable him to move inland, but their plans were shaped by the march of the Overmountain Men to Kings Mountain. After they defeated Patrick Ferguson and his Loyalists, Clinton directed Leslie to leave Virginia and go to Charlestown, South Carolina.

The Virginians who succeeded in forcing General Leslie to abandon his raid after less than a month (October 30-November 22, 1780) were not the Tidewater militia. Instead, it was Colonel William Campbell and his volunteers from southwestern Virginia, united with Tennessee patriots, who won at Kings Mountain and triggered the British to alter their plans.1

Clinton quickly arranged for another invasion of Virginia. He sent Benedict Arnold south from New York in December, 1780. There was a British army in Virginia for the next 10 months, commanded first by Arnold, then by General William Phillips, and finally by Lord Cornwallis.

Note that the experience was that militia in the immediate area of a British force would NOT turn out; they would stay home to protect against marauders. The state learned to draw militia from counties not directly affected by the British presence. Jefferson spent a lot of time on this, as his papers show.

So which Continental troops were responsible for containing and ultimately ending the Matthew raid of 1779 and the Leslie raid of 1780? HMMMM?

That would be NONE. The state line might well have been able to resist and defeat either raid, if it had not been SENT SOUTH (by Jefferson, in response to Continental pleading, sacrificing state interests for the larger ones -- rightly in my view).

Since you have a preference for secondary works over, you know, original research in the primary documents supervised by the history faculty of the University of Virginia, you can take a look at the entry for "Virginia detachments" in Berg's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CONTINENTAL ARMY UNITS. Which includes:

"Virginia had an elaborate recruiting system which utilized militia officers to gather recruits to send to the Continental Army and in times of emergency it appears that temporary, but numbered, units were formed from the available companies of Continental recruits for the Continental regiments and from companies of militia."

Virginia had a large number of supernumerary Continental officers with no troops to command, and so home recruiting. These were often utilized not only with such detachments but also with militia battalions.

It really is complicated, but all of this infrastructure existed through the militia, and the Continentals (at least in Virginia) could not have been maintained without it.

I don't think there's any such animal as "the militia" in the AWI. In New England, the local farmers barely need support. The British seldom get out of range of ship's guns after Lexington and Concord. To the west, the frontiersmen pretty well guard against Indians with the help of a small regular garrison at Fort Pitt. In the southern tidewater, the locals maintain a guerilla and civil war.

But in New York, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, the population is divided in religion, politics and ethnicity. Not too surprising that Pennsylvania Quakers, Anglican merchants in New York and Philadelphia and the Johnson and deLancey affiliations of New York are a poor source of part-time soldiers. Pennsylvania doesn't even have a militia law, I think, and relies on the "Associators." And it's there in those three states that Charles Lee, Washington and others discuss the frustrations of trying to work with "the militia." They had a valid complaint, but it wasn't the whole story.

Perfectly true the southern militia can't win a battle against British regulars. But grab a few miniatures and play out Cowpens and Guilford without the American militia. And count the British regiments tied up trying to garrison the territory they've supposedly "conquered" precisely because the militia still keep taking the field.

Imagine the Continental Army at peak strength--under 40,000 and we could barely feed and clothe that many--and picture them guarding a coast from Maine to Savannah against an army transported by the Royal Navy, and watching a frontier from the Mohawk Valley to Florida against the tribes, then talk to me about the uselessness of the militia.

Man for man in combat, a regular might be worth three militiamen. But he couldn't be in three places at once, and he probably cost more than four or five militiamen.

Yes, the militia reflected the societies they were drawn from, and so differed greatly in many respects. The New England towns were relatively homogeneous, and highly motivated by the Intolerable Acts. I suspect the army around Boston could have contained the British indefinitely, and even acted offensively as a Bunker Hill. Of course Knox's guns from Ticonderoga did help!

The south was indeed much more divided. There the role of the militia in compelling commitment from men who might prefer neutrality was crucial. And the population control.

Kevin, looking forward to your responses to all of this.

Bunker Hill was a defensive battle by the Americans. They had occupied the position because it was not occupied by the British.

looking forward to your responses to all of this.

I suggest we have a detailed discussion offline, citing references if necessary and then posting our separate conclusions on the forum.

My home email is Boulart198@yahoo.com.

Bunker Hill was a strategic offensive by the New Englanders. Once they had a few guns on the hill, and a furnace for hotshot, the British ships couldn't stay in the harbor. Checkmate. The British HAD to assault them before that happened. So a strategic offensive and then a tactical defense. GW did the same thing on Dorchester Heights to break the seige. Really a smart strategy by the Americans.

I'm docnmmcbride@comcast.net. But I'm not sure how much more there is to say? Plus I'm not sure if anyone else is still interested?

Yes, this the same as the last post on militia.

But Kevin, why the obsession on trying to portray the militia as useless?

As most of us have pointed out previously, the militias had their failures, they had their successes and they served purposes other than fighting. They were not useless. So again, what is your underlying purpose with these posts?

This forum is giving too much credit to the militia. By its very existence, and the emphasis on the militia, the Continental Army was never going to be anywhere near its authorized strength, and that forced the army to employ the militia with the Continentals on the battlefield. And that more often than not did not work out well for the US.

I still have not seen anyone on this forum say the militia won the revolution by themselves. They credit them where credit was due them. They admit they had issues as well.

Seems like tilting at windmills Kevin.

Oh well, enough said.

Have you read the references I have posted? The evidence is there and there is more if the references are looked at and noted.

Kevin, do your references discuss the attitude of the revolutionary generation towards a standing army? The example of Cromwell, parliament's general who overthrew parliament and made himself military dictator, was very familiar, as their own recent history, to the colonists. They, and we, honor Washington in some large part because he proved himself honorable and NOT a Cromwell (nor a Bonaparte) but the Founders didn't know that would be the case until it was demonstrated, e.g. at Newburgh. Will you concede that creation of a large professional army with no checks upon it was anathema to many, and that there was no realistic political possibility of such happening? If you have read as widely in the history of the Revolution, surely you understand that?

Just how opposed were the Founding Fathers to a standing army?
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Their revolutionary experience of the founding fathers forged a deep mistrust of standing armies. They viewed them as a pernicious threat to liberty. Here are just a few quotes that explain how and why the idea (what we would call a police state today) was anathema to the first Americans.

During the Virginia ratifying convention, James Madison described a standing army as the "greatest mischief that can happen."

In addition, fellow delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, George Mason put a finer point on it:

"No man has a greater regard for the military gentlemen than I have. I admire their intrepidity, perseverance, and valor. But when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty. When, against a regular and disciplined army, yeomanry are the only defence [sic], — yeomanry, unskilful and unarmed, — what chance is there for preserving freedom? Give me leave to recur to the page of history, to warn you of your present danger. Recollect the history of most nations of the world. What havoc, desolation, and destruction, have been perpetrated by standing armies!"

WAS A STANDING ARMY A THREAT TO THE FOUNDING FATHERS?
In addition, in The Federalist, No. 29, Alexander Hamilton echoes not only Mason's warning against a standing army, but his solution to the threat, as well.

If circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist.

In addition, commenting on Blackstone's Commentaries, founding jurist St. George Tucker speaks as if he foresaw our day. He addresses the fatal combination of an increasingly militarized police force and the disarmament of civilians:

Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

St George Tucker, btw, late a distinguished jurist, was a militia major at Guilford and wounded rallying the second line.