Members of a militia are ordinary people who have regular jobs: lawyers, farmers, teachers, nurses, cooks, etc. When there is a need for defensive action, they meet their fellow militia members as a military unit. When the action is over, they return to their everyday lives.
During the 1600s and 1700s, the militia was the primary defensive force in British North America. The British army was present, but proved to be less effective, and more expensive, than the militia groups. Residents of the Thirteen Colonies resented the fact that they had to pay taxes to pay for this useless presence. As historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write,
The most important response to the dangerous military realities was the creation of a militia system in each colony. The British military heritage, the all-pervasive sense of military insecurity, and the inability of the economically poor colonies to maintain an expensive professional army all combined to guarantee that the Elizabethan militia would be transplanted to the North American wilderness. No colonial institution was more complex than the militia. In many respects it was static and homogeneous, varying little from colony to colony and from generation to generation. Yet the militia was also evolutionary and heterogeneous, as diverse as the thirteen colonies and ever-changing within individual colonies.
The concept of the militia was shaped by democracy and equality. Rich or poor, men were equally obliged to serve in the militia, and served side-by-side. The militia was an expression of the community, and the people spoke of “our” militia.
The soldiers in the army, on the other hand, were not part of the community. They were from far away. They had no affection for, or loyalty to, the local villages. Quite the opposite: such soldiers were often problems for the neighborhood residents.
At the heart of the militia was the principle of universal military obligation for all able-bodied males. Colonial laws regularly declared that all able-bodied men between certain ages automatically belonged to the militia. Yet within the context of this immutable principle, variations abounded. While the normal age limits were from 16 to 60, this was not universal practice. Connecticut, for example, began with an upper age limit of 60 but gradually reduced it to 45. Sometimes the lower age limit was 18 or even 21. Each colony also established occupational exemptions from militia training. Invariably the exemption list began small but grew to become a seemingly endless list that reduced the militia's theoretical strength.
The community spirit grew as most families contributed in one way or another to the shared work of defending the land. The feeling of equality grew as elite men and ordinary men served together. The sense of democracy grew as the people of the village made decisions together.
The dangers to the settlers varied from decade to decade: Indians (“Native Amerians”), French, Spanish, and other forces attacked from time to time. Millett and Maslowski explain:
If a man was in the militia, he participated in periodic musters, or training days, with the other members of his unit. Attendance at musters was compulsory; militia laws levied fines for nonattendance. During the initial years of settlement, when dangers seemed particularly acute, musters were frequent. However, as the Indian threat receded, the trend was toward fewer muster days, and by the early 1700s most colonies had decided that four peacetime musters per year were sufficient.
The main weapons were muskets, hatchets, and swords. Gradually, the rifle replaced the musket.
Almost every home had a firearm anyway, because hunting was a fundamental way of providing food for families.
Militiamen had to provide and maintain their own weapons. Militia laws detailed the required weaponry, which underwent a rapid evolution in the New World. Initially a militiaman was armed much like a European soldier, laden with armor, equipped with either a pike or matchlock musket, and carrying a sword. But Indian warfare was not European warfare, and most of this weaponry proved of limited value. By the mid-1670s colonial armaments had been revolutionized. Armor, which made it difficult to traverse rugged terrain and pursue Indians, disappeared. Pikes were equally cumbersome and of little use against Indians, who neither stood their ground when assaulted nor made massed charges. At times the matchlock was superior to Indian bows and arrows, but its disadvantages were many. It took two minutes to load, and misfired approximately three times in every ten shots. The weapon discharged when a slow-burning match came in contact with the priming powder, but keeping the match lit on rainy or windy days was difficult, and the combination of a burning match and gunpowder in close proximity often resulted in serious accidents. The flintlock musket replaced the matchlock. Depending on flint scraping against steel for discharge, flintlocks could be loaded in thirty seconds and misfired less often. Swords remained common weapons, but colonists increasingly preferred hatchets for close-quarter combat. Although both weapons were valuable in a melee, hatchets were also useful for a variety of domestic purposes.
Almost everyone in the community contributed to the task of defense in some way. Those who weren’t directly in the militia could, e.g., provide materials and supplies for the militiamen, or tend to the house and land of a militiaman who was away from home on militia work.
Those with little money received equipment from the community. Those who weren’t actively part of the militia were sometimes still required to maintain weapons ready in their homes, as Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski note:
Militia laws emphasized the importance of a well-armed citizenry in numerous ways. To ensure that each man had the requisite weapons and accoutrements, colonies instituted a review of arms, imposing the duty. of conducting it on militia officers, muster masters, or other specially appointed officials. Every colony's law detailed how destitute citizens could be armed at public expense, and legislatures provided for public arsenals to supplement individually owned armaments. Colonies also required that even men exempted from attending musters should be completely armed and equipped.
To participate in the community’s militia was a duty and even an obligation, as Adam Winkler writes:
A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters — where their guns would be inspected.
Although the militia was a military concept, it shaped civilian culture and society, promoting a sense of mutuality and equality, and instilling a sense of duty, responsibility, and obligation into the individual citizens as they provided for their own defense, and participated in that defense, at the local level, not entrusting it to some far off imperial capital.
Originally instituted to protect the colonies from outside dangers, i.e., to keep the colonies safely a part of the empire, the militias would then be used to gain independence from the empire.
