Yet another grab nuts gun discussion. YAGNGD for short.
In today’s Slate, Eric Herschthal notes that the Continental Army at Yorktown was made up of 20% Virginia Militia members, about 1/3 Northern recruits and something over 1/2 French. Yes, I realize those numbers don’t sum up well. The Virginia militia demanded and received payment in the form of land and slaves: both were confiscated from Loyalist plantations.
While Common Sense et al inspired many in the early days, there were other factors that instigated rebellion as well: these include, “…popular outrage the British caused when they incited Indian tribes against the colonists. [Also,] …Britain’s decision to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom.”
So, no, I wouldn’t say that superior small arms experience and handling won the Revolutionary War.
To expand on this:
Rebel militia weren’t particularly effective when they faced British regulars in battle. But the British army couldn’t be everywhere at once. Wherever the main British forces weren’t was where the Rebel militia played an important role. They controlled territory, asserted American authority, and (in the simplest possible terms) went around beating up Loyalists and stealing their stuff.
When this thread started, I grabbed my copy of David McCullough"s “1776” and re-read through the first few chapters.
The siege of Boston was initiated by the Militias after the Battle of Bunker/Breed’s Hill, a costly victory for the British. The Militias effectively kept the British Army bottled up behind the “Neck” in Boston and the Charlestown peninsula for months on their own and while Washington and Co. organized an Army. Many of these soldiers became the backbone of the Continental Army. Nathaniel Greene and Henry Knox were businessmen who had read books on war, never actually fought before, became crucial to the war through the siege and did a few things worth remembering.
So my answer to the OP, Militias started the War, sustained the Siege but were only able to win by becoming a Regular Army.
The abilities, tactics and utility of Militias in the later parts of the Revolution are a different matter IMHO and subject to great debate.
Capt
The problems with militia had nothing to do with guns or firearms training, though. Many militiamen had been drilling at firearms usage for literally years, some would have been veterans of battles with Natives or maybe even fought with the British regulars as attached colonial forces during the French & Indian War. These guys in general knew how to fire a gun and how to reload, probably as good as any Continental.
Militia were problematic because they lacked discipline and were not willing to operate as regular soldiers. Militia companies typically elected their officers, if they didn’t like the orders an officer gave he was typically removed from power. Militia were typically unwilling to march far from home or stay for long periods deployed in any form.
The major Continental Forces had to march hundreds of miles and live away from home for many years, often times receiving pay in arrears or not at all, and dealing with great privation and suffering. Militia had no real legal obligation to put up with any of that, and many didn’t. (Some continentals deserted in spite of their obligations, of course.) Militia were also prone to flee first and in the greatest numbers in battle, traditional battles of the age required immense discipline to exchange massed-volleys of musket fire and by and large militia did not have it.
So the gun issue is really not the relevant point, militia never would have won the revolution because they totally lacked discipline and were mostly unmanageable in the context of traditional battles of the era.
Happy 4th of July everyone!
Just to emphasize what Martin Hyde said, the 2nd amendment as a bulwark against tyranny argument has 2 parts, insofar as the Revolutionary War is concerned. The first involves the role and effectiveness of militias during the conflict. We have seen that they did play a role, but not the major one and their efforts were wholly insufficient for victory.
The second link involves the role of weapons training and experience in becoming a militiaman or soldier. Obviously it helps. But that sort of thing can be picked up, unless you are a true sharpshooter, which is specialist work. I’ve hypothesized that weapons handling is but a small part of the total amount of preparation that a soldier would need on the field. And that the cost of weaponry is a small part of that needed to do the same. So even if you believe that a militia is a bulwark, it’s not clear how much owning small arms at your home helps relative to all other requirements. It assists a little, but so would gaining a basic knowledge of military tactics, strategy, logistics, camping, and sanitation.
For completeness, a third consideration is that there will be countrymen on the other side: in the case of the Revolutionary War there were Loyalists, Indians and slaves hired in exchange for their freedom by the British. That the slaves had little small arms training probably didn’t give the redcoats much pause. And the Loyalist’s possession of small arms didn’t make them invincible against confiscation of their land.
Perhaps this is a dead-horse argument? No identifiable gun nut seems willing to argue that irregulars were anything in particular in the American Revolution, let alone argue in favor of the myth of the Minuteman.
I think the historical record is clear: the performance of irregulars was…irregular.
Taken in conjunction with the good Captain’s post, and my own military background, training, and experience, irregulars can be a valuable force multiplier or an unmitigated disaster. Effective irregulars can be “eyes and ears in the rear,” providing valuable intelligence; they can threaten an adversary’s supply lines, or sabotage infrastructure, thus tying up needed troops to secure and patrol them. They can bleed an enemy’s troops, the “death from a thousand cuts.” And some of them did do this effectively back then. Look up Francis Marion, for one example.
The real problem back then seems to be when they were called upon to stand in the line of battle, or were relied upon to stand as such.
In the modern era, irregulars have given powerful nations major fits at times, and the question of “effectveness” has as much to do with actual capabilities and tactical achievements as it does political will on the part of both/all sides of any given conflict they’re involved in.
And its a funny thing about militias; when they’re on your side they’re the spontaneous will of the people/glorious freedom fighters fighting to drive the hated foreigners from your sacred homeland’s soil, or overthrow the tyrant’s regime and bring liberty to their people.
When they’re not on your side, their terroristic murdering scum, etc., etc.
When the British came back in 1812 they marched on DC and burned the Capitol. Hard to believe a well armed civilian populace would run instead of fighting to save the center of government, but they did. The well armed militia being necessary argument has always been a crock, wish people cared as much about the Bush/Obama using the 4th and 6th amendments as toilet paper as they do about gun rights. Yeah, we’re happy idiots…
Sadly, you seem ignorant of history. Perhaps you should look up the population density of the DC metro (such as it was…mostly a large swamp with a sparse population in the region) and other such trivia before spouting off a load of horseshit next time.
I’ve heard that ignorance is bliss…
There were entire Union regiments that decided to privately buy Henry repeaters, in fact. The results were horrifying carnage.
I suspect Boer units fought (and won) major engagements with privately owned weapons in the Boer War, which would be a more recent case.
There’s a long history even to the modern day of soldiers bringing their own privately purchased equipment to war. As recently as the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts I’ve read many reports of soldiers buying after-market body armor and side arms. Neither would really be permissible, but that doesn’t of course mean it doesn’t happen.
I don’t know what the rules were during WWII but in a lot of the histories focusing on common soldiers you read about guys that brought their own sidearms, especially pilots and the like might buy a personal pistol instead of using the issued one.
With the British there was even an officer that wore a broadsword into battle and carried a bow and arrow.
It doesn’t have to be domestic.
Well, I’m happy to cut it out, I am just using it as shorthand. I count myself in the gun nut category (although i think I am more accurately described as gun nerd or gun geek).
I think that as long as those eventual regulars that made a difference started out as irregulars, they count as irregulars making a difference if the irregular period was a necessary precondition to the following period of regular activity.
A lot of guys these days bring still bring their own pistol. Pistols are not issued to everyone and even if you do get one issued to you, you might not like it. I think a lot of guys bring their own 1911.
I think that’s a fair question to ask. I also note that the British army hired slaves in exchange for their freedom, so to say that frontier weapons skills are a “Necessary precondition” for being a soldier is probably false. But we can dial it back a little. Here’s a counterfactual: would the Americans have lost if, say, all their recruits lacked weapons training before they signed up? I understand that the big advantage of muskets over swords and arrows during that era was that it was relatively easy to train a man with the former. (Source: Samurai movies!) I personally have little experience with firearms (and they are surely easier to operate now) but from what I saw at Williamsburg, while experience with them would certainly help, this isn’t rocket science or even artillery ballistics that we’re discussing.
I agree that you can train almost anyone to effectively use a gun in a short time. I don’t know if the revolution would have failed absent colonist who were proficient with weapons but I think the revolution might very well have failed if the colonists didn’t have any weapons. I think some of what the colonists did early on was a necessary precondition to what followed.
Ok, but I can’t see how the weapons necessarily needed to be stored at individual’s houses. Access to an armory would have been sufficient. Of course now the historical analogy starts breaking down: frontier societies bordering sometimes (not always) hostile indigenous peoples are apt to be armed.
As for early on, what was significant was that there were men willing to die for the cause, or what they believed the cause to be. Such a situation can be demonstrated without firearms at home. Riots and massacres do that for example.
Same answer, really, as the guy up thread who was talking about DC and attempting to use this as an example of why guns in the hands of the citizens didn’t work in fending off a concentrated British attack (to put his argument kindly). The US at that time was not a concentrated population as Europe was. Hell, we aren’t all that concentrated NOW, compared to much of Western Europe. In order to get the weapons in the hands of the people you would need them to all slog in to a central location, then be issued weapons, powder and shot, then have them trudge out to an assembly area, then march them off to do whatever it was you wanted them to do when you called them up in the first place. That’s fine, if you have a concentrated population and you have all the logistics in place to do all that. We didn’t have that early on except in maybe a couple of the largest cities. Even there our cities weren’t anywhere near as built up or had near the logistic in place to do what I just described, let alone ALSO worry about feeding them and clothing them. Remember, we had a hell of a time just doing the latter things, and that was with Frances aid.
Later on down the pike we were able to form, train and support real, professional troops (at ruinous cost to the early US, and again with massive aid from France…something that ended up breaking THEM btw, and they were a well established nation state, unlike us…and we STILL had to rely on militia and folks with their own weapons).
All of this leaves aside the fact that early America was basically a huge frontier area, there were no police or protection for any but the most concentrated parts of our population, you needed a gun in your house to most likely put meat on the table, or any of the myriad other reasons it was a good idea.
If you read my caveat carefully, you’ll see that we have a fair amount of agreement. That said, irregulars were of most significance in the early days of the revolution. And at that point the action was centered around Boston - where we did have a sufficiently concentrated population. Furthermore once warfare shifted to the field, the Continental Army became the major player, though not the only one.
Recall also that the OP inquired about applicability to the modern day, when armories or gun clubs are wholly plausible.
You guys do know there were armories for militia, right? That’s actually what the British were marching to when the fighting at Lexington & Concord broke out. When colonial leadership got word the British were marching to seize an armory and confiscate all of its contents the minutemen were raised to stop them (they had moved most of their stuff out of the magazine before so it was never at real risk.)
There was actually good reason at that point in time to have both individually stored weapons and an armory. Mainly because during mustering time you might have to do some fighting, and the thought was you may have to fight ad hoc to get to the muster point at the armory. This would have been something colonists learned from their forebears as native attacks came out of nowhere and you’d have to possibly fight your way to a muster point.
Another good reason was many of these militia arsenals/magazines were not so much arsenals as they were just big powder houses. For obvious reasons if you want to store a lot of black powder you probably don’t want to store it near someone’s house, so you built sturdy powderhouses a bit removed from people’s homes but somewhat centrally located between the group of militia that would need to muster to that point. Some militia I believe even had small bore cannons in some of their arsenals, which is another thing it’d be impractical to keep at home.
So in today’s day and age, do we need the right to bear arms at the individual level to fend off tyranny or would a bunch of armories be good enough?
I think they have the armory system in places like South Korea so that if the North Koreans come pouring over the DMZ, the citizenry (there is compulsory military service so pretty much every male is a veteran) can help fend them off.
The nation is otherwise almost entirely disarmed.
Of course, while this might provide some protection against invasion, Korea suffered under decades of military dicatorship because the government guys with the guns (aka army) hung out around the armories in case anybody got any ideas.