Forgotten Warriors- Forgotten Battles - The Thirteen Revolutionary militias and their Indispensable Role

Why write on the militias? They don’t exactly have the best reputation do they? The militias were the primary defense force for the American colonies for most of the period from 1607-1775, a period when those colonies experienced explosive growth and prosperity, all the while amidst a highly hostile environment. Yet these militias have such a poor reputation. Normally in such hostile conditions, a poorly defended society does not prosper. Yet clearly America prospered. But if the militias were so inadequate, how then did the English colonies thrive all the while surrounded by Dutch, Spanish, and French competitors and the indigenous tribes who opposed their every expansion? This incongruity cries out for examination, it cries out for revision.

By the only measure that matters, the militiaman was a tremendous success. The society he defended prospered and grew. No North American English colony was ever conquered.a Some came to within the knife's edge of defeat, but every time militiamen rose to the challenge. Every time his colony was threatened, the militiaman interposed himself between a merciless enemy and his family, his village, and all he held dear. He often willingly sacrificed himself to ensure their survival. Along the way, he developed the curious knack of being just good enough, however high or low the bar was set. The emergency over, he quietly returned to plow, sickle, or hammer. The militiaman was, in the truest sense, an amateur soldier. He was only a soldier as long as needed; when his soldierly skills were no longer wanted he was a farmer, tanner, blacksmith, fisherman, preacher, or any one of the many vocations in colonial America.

But, scholars, historians, and military figures have spent the past one and fifty hundred years disparaging the militiaman, since at least immediate aftermath of the Civil War. General Emory Upton, a strong advocate of a professional army, wrote a scathing indictment of the militia in The Military Policy of the United States published in 1904. “We will first indicate to the reader the chief causes of weakness of our present system, and next will outline the system which ought to replace it.

Historians quickly picked up where he left off. In one such example, Professor Higginbotham, in a speech at the 6th Military History Symposium in 1976 questioned the very institutional existence of the militias, “But when was the militia ever a viable institution? I do not think that you could have convinced Washington or Knox that it was ever viable during the Revolution.” John Shy, while arguing in 1962 for a stronger role of the militias in the Revolution stated the then current scholarly assessment of the militias as “a fairly static institution” and one that was both “militarily inefficient” and “relatively uncomplicated.” Of late that view has seen some needed revision. Still, even today the militias are often described as static, incompetent, randomly good or bad, easily panicked, and unable to improve.2

Yes, it is true that the militias, being amateurs, had panics, made mistakes, and failed at times. But, quite unjustly, these failures have come to define them. Alongside each failure is a success, albeit much less remarked on or remembered. Beside each battlefield flight is a stalwart defense maintained to the last extremity or a successful militia attack pressed until the enemy’s defeat. Yet despite his successes the militiaman has been much maligned in history, from the day he lived, through the centuries and even to today. His prowess has been belittled, his accomplishments scorned, his soldierly skills scoffed at. Only his enemies grew to respect him, and they only after they had fought him. This simple truth has been much neglected in colonial histories. The list of enemies laid low by unskilled, lowborn, rabble militiamen is long indeed. Powhatan warriors tried and failed, and so did New England’s Algonquin tribes. The French, Dutch, and Spanish all crossed swords with the militiaman and yet failed to conquer. So too did the Iroquois, Creek and Cherokee, the Abenaki, the Ohio Indians, the Delaware, and numerous pirates all come against our lowly militiaman and they all failed. Still has history judged him oh so harshly. Why?

Often it was men with an agenda. The gentry and monarchs did not want to promote the idea that free men, peasants, could succeed without them. So too they scarcely understood the Indian warriors’ capabilities until an arrogant General Braddock marched a thousand doomed regulars into the wilderness. Yet even then they did not believe the militiaman possessed soldierly qualities. After Concord, Generals Gage and Sir Percy were surprised at their steadfast enemy. A brave, resolute militiaman was outside of all their familiar paradigms. As did their monarchs, the professional soldiers scorned him, disparaging his ability, the difficulties he faced, and most of all his accomplishments. This view was seconded by Continental officers during and after the Revolution. Daniel Morgan, wrote that he had 800 men at Cowpens, the number of his Continentals, but he forgot to mention the hundreds of militiamen who fought in the battle. After the Revolution, General Knox downplayed militia numbers and their role. So did Hamilton whose Federalist ideas were more congruent with a large professional army.

Which of these two views is accurate? Were the successful colonial defenders for 180 years truly incompetent, static, unable to change, and of little real ability in battle? If so why did they have such an unbroken record of success? Why did their society flourish behind such a poor bulwark in such hostile conditions? You will be surprised at the answers, and you will be further surprised at exactly who the Revolutionary militiaman was and how much he sacrificed and accomplished, how rich was the heritage he bequeathed to us.

The history of the Continental Army in the American Revolution is both well understood and extensively chronicled. The role of the militias however is somewhat less well understood. While the militias are included in every history of the Revolution, only rarely have they been looked at critically. Their contributions are the subject of considerable debate, and opinions vary greatly about their relative worth to the American war effort. In the American Revolution, the militias had a mix of both good and bad battlefield performances. At times they were very good, as at Concord, King’s Mountain, and Bennington where militia armies defeated European regulars with little or no aid from Continentals. At other times they fled with barely a shot fired as at Kip’s Bay, the Pennsylvanians at Princeton, and the North Carolinians at Briar Creek. In the American Revolution, their performances are often considered randomly poor or randomly good. But are they random? This work looks at the Revolution and focuses on the militias, when they performed poorly, when they performed well, and most importantly why. This work will explain why their failures occurred and will show that their failures have a pattern, and in fact reflect a stage in their development to adapt to and repel the English invasion.

To understand how good or bad the militias were and why, we must look at their wars. Wars are complex creatures. They can be studied on many levels and often have been. One level concerns the interaction of the opposing generals’ decisions, Rommel and Patton, Grant and Lee, Washington and Howe. Another method involves the clash of armies, a chronological recounting of combat as each army seeks to dominate and crush the other. Ever read Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe or Von Manstein's Lost Victories? Another way to study a conflict is from the soldiers’ eyes. Anderson’s A People’s Army or Forrest’s Soldiers of the French Revolution are great examples of this. Each level of historical study uncovers valid truth about the conflicts studied, but often not the same truths. Frequently, a truth is unclear at one level but quite prominent at another. Skilled authors have penned multi-level studies. For example, Scheer and Rankin’s Rebels and Redcoats manages a fine synthesis of the personal level and the clash of armies. From this one book you can learn a lot about our Revolution and the men who fought it.

One of the finest multilevel studies is David Chandler’s The Campaigns of Napoleon. Chandler examines the French Revolution and Napoleon’s Imperial Wars on several different levels. One of them is the institutional level. He sees the Napoleonic Wars as a clash between a newly reorganized French Army and Napoleonic tactical system arrayed against other European powers using military institutions and war fighting methods developed 40 years previously. Chandler’s thesis is that an improved and modernized French military institution translated into higher French Army combat effectiveness. It is this level or perspective that this work looks at, a level of study that is somewhat under-examined. It is also a level at which certain truths are apparent that are not readily discernable at other levels.

To the fighting men, a war is literally a matter of life and death. Men in combat therefore operate at their height of innovative and adaptive ability. For example, in World War II what Americans did with the tank was astounding. Tanks that float; sounds like...