UNRULY REPUBLICAN MILITIAS: EXAMINING THE FAILURE OF MILITIA REFORM IN THE FEDERALIST ERA

Abstract

Following the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the American Revolution, the United States faced the daunting task of transitioning from an alliance of rebellious colonies to a unified republican government. From the outset the United States struggled to integrate their revolutionary ideology into a functional system of governance. The country’s national defense establishment typified this struggle. Professional armies, eighteenth-century Americans believed, remained antithetical to republican principles. Such forces, they believed, were the tools authoritarian leaders wielded to promote tyranny and suppress individual liberties. Their ranks were filled with aristocratic officers and mindless mercenary soldiers drawn from the lowest rungs of society. To preserve their revolutionary ideals, the young nation chose to place their national defense in the hands of local militias. Filled with citizen-soldiers, militias provided security while avoiding the evils of professional armies.The nation’s militia system following the revolution, however, remained in disarray. Based in local communities across the nation, the militia remained poorly organized, ill-equipped, and poorly trained. Local citizens, state and federal policymakers, and military officials remained committed to fixing the only military system compatible with their idealized republican society. In the first decade following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, the federal and state governments passed waves of legislation to try and reform the militia system. Despite these efforts, the militia, by the end of the federalist era, remained poorly organized, ill-equipped, and, in a single defining word, ineffective. The limited scholarly attention devoted to examining the militia during this period centers on the national political debate amongst elite politicians and the legislation they drafted to improve the militia. Such debates reveal how republican ideology, the same ideology which necessitated the militia, imposed constraints on the system. Historians, however, often remain less focused on actual militia organizations. Examining local militias illuminates the impact these republican constraints placed on the system. Exploring the thoughts and actions of local militiamen also reveals they too embraced republican principles. Their unique equalitarian conception of republicanism, however, contrasted with the conception most policymakers held. Militiamen resisted the militia system policymakers imposed, deeming it incompatible with true republican principles. Well-crafted legislation mattered little if militiamen refused to enact the system policymakers set forth. Instead of compromising, policymakers tried to rein in the unruly militias. These efforts provoked more resistance. Exhausted after years of failed reform, the government increasingly turned to the least republican option of all: a professional standing army.