Chapter One

A Dangerous New World

1607-1689

Crossing the Atlantic during the seventeenth century was a perilous voyage, entailing weeks or months of cramped quarters, inadequate food, and unsanitary conditions. Yet in the late 1500s Englishmen had begun to hazard the venture, and in 1607 they planted their first permanent settlement on the North American continent at Jamestown. By the early 1730s, thirteen separate colonies hugged the seaboard. Although great diversity prevailed among the colonies, most colonists shared a common English heritage and clung to it tenaciously. Their religious attitudes, economic views, political thoughts, and military ideals and institutions were all grounded in English history. In no aspect of colonial life was this heritage more important than in regard to military matters. The colonists' most revered military institution (the militia) and their most cherished military tradition (fear of a standing army) both came from England.

The earliest English settlers arrived in a dangerous New World. The initial colonies represented little more than amphibious landings on a hostile coastline followed by the consolidation of small, insecure beach-heads. The settlers did not take possession of an uninhabited land, but settled in regions controlled by various native American tribes. Fortunately for the colonists, they unwittingly landed in areas that had recently experienced precipitous population losses among the Indians.

Europeans made periodic contact with the natives long before they established permanent colonies. These transient visitors left a devastating legacy of smallpox, measles, and other European diseases, for which the natives had no built-in immunities. But the colonists soon learned that the Indians, even in their weakened state, were a formidable adversary. Nor were Indians the only military threat. The English settled in lands also claimed by their European rivals, and the memory of the raids conducted by the Spanish, French, and English against each other's out-posts in the Caribbean and along the Florida coast undoubtedly haunted many colonists. The fear of pillaging buccaneers and pirates who infested coastal waterways compounded the potential problem posed by European enemies.

Colonists faced these threats alone. Although the English monarch authorized their expeditions and granted extensive lands for settlement, the Crown expected the colonists to defend themselves. With few illusions about their precarious position, colonists came to the New World armed and, anticipating conflict, gave prompt attention to defense. Professional soldiers accompanied the expeditions to Jamestown, Plymouth, and succeeding colonies. Indeed, the first heroes in American history were far from ordinary settlers. The profit-seeking Virginia Company hired Captain John Smith, a veteran of Europe's religious wars, to teach military skills to the settlers at Jamestown in 1607. Other experienced soldiers, such as Lord De La Warr, Sir Thomas Gates, and Sir Thomas Dale, soon followed him. The pious Pilgrims wisely did not rely on God's favor alone for protection, employing Captain Myles Standish, a veteran of the Dutch wars for independence, to ensure Plymouth's success. Although Smith and Standish are the most famous of the soldier-settlers, practically all the other colonies had similar veterans who provided military leadership during the founding period. The importance placed on military preparations could be seen in the attention given to fortifications. Less than a month after their arrival, the settlers at Jamestown had constructed a primitive, triangular fort, and by 1622 the Pilgrims had erected a 2,700-foot-long defensive perimeter guarding their fledgling plantation.

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.

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.

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.

Whether few or many, muster days helped forge a link between religious duty and military service, particularly in New England. An integral part of each training day (and of all military expeditions) was a sermon, which invariably fostered an aggressive militancy by emphasizing that the Bible sanctioned martial activity and that warfare was a true Christian's sacred duty. "Hence it is no wayes unbecoming a Christian to learn to be a Souldier," chaplain Samuel Nowell preached to Massachusetts militiamen in 1678, because being a soldier was "a Credit, a praise and a glory." When the colonists unsheathed their swords, they did so in God's name, serene in the belief that the Lord was on their side against their heathen and Papist enemies and that whatever happened was God's will.

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.

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.

Although the basic tactical unit in all the colonies was the company, or trainband, regional variations and changes over time were as important as the superficial uniformity. No standardized company size existed, some companies containing as few as sixty-five men and others as many as two hundred. Some trainbands elected their officers, but in others the governors appointed them. Southern colonies, with widely dispersed populations, often organized companies on a countywide basis, while in New England, with its towns and villages, individual communities contained their own trainbands. As populations increased and the number of trainbands grew, colonies organized companies into regiments to preserve efficient management. As one last example of the variety and change within militia units, the initial all-infantry composition evolved into a mixture of infantry and mounted units, the latter providing increased maneuverability and speed, which were valuable assets in Indian warfare.

Militia officers, like colonial politicians, overwhelmingly came from the upper class, and men moved with ease from important political positions into high military offices and vice versa. The practice of plural office holding, whereby a man simultaneously held political and military office, epitomized the integration of political and military leadership. For example, in Salem, Massachusetts, between 1765 and 1774 twelve of the twenty-nine active militia officers also held important positions in the municipal government. Similar instances could be cited for other colonies.

The militia was, above all else, a local institution, and officers rarely ordered their men to serve far from home. Each colony organized its militia for its own defense, a principle frequently embodied in legislation prohibiting the militia's use outside a colony's boundaries. Every colony faced Indian attacks, worried about rival Europeans, and experienced financial stringencies. How could Virginia help South Carolina without rendering itself less secure, or New York assist Pennsylvania without subjecting itself to increased danger? It could not -- or at least believed that it could not.

Within a colony civil authority controlled military matters, establishing America's revered tradition of civilian control over the military. However, a shift occurred in the governmental branch exercising predominant influence over the militia. Initially the governors dominated, often receiving their power directly from the King, who gave them wide latitude in appointing officers and waging war. But people considered the governor analogous to the King, the colonial assemblies analogous to Parliament. In England the King and Parliament, and in the colonies governors and assemblies, battled for supremacy. The legislative branch emerged triumphant in both Britain and America. By the mid-eighteenth century a governor's military authority lacked substance without the cooperation of the legislature, which had gained almost exclusive control over expenditures, including military appropriations. Using the power of the purse as a lever, legislatures gradually assumed control of the militia. By the Revolution, civilian authority over the military meantlegislativecontrol.

As the frontier advanced, the militia decayed. The rot appeared first in the more densely settled seaboard regions, where the Indian threat had diminished by the waning years of the seventeenth century, and spread into the interior. Militia service became more of a social or ceremonial function than a military function. The decreasing muster days witnessed little serious training and instead became occasions for picnics for the privates and elegant dinners for the officers. Men clamored for more restricted age limitations and an expanded exemption list and complained about the burden of maintaining weapons and equipment. Increasingly men sought militia officership not from a sense of duty, but because, as one critic wrote, they had "an amazing infatuation" with military titles as symbols of social prominence. Everywhere authorities laxly enforced the militia laws.

As the common militia based on universal and obligatory service deteriorated, a new phenomenon emerged, partially filling the military void. In George Washington's words, some men always had "a natural fondness for Military parade," enjoyed soldiering, and willingly devoted time and money to it. Thus "volunteer militia" companies arose, distinct from the common militia, with their own uniforms, equipment, organization, and esprit de corps. Like so much of the American military heritage, independent volunteer militia units traced their roots to England, especially to London's Honorable Artillery Company, chartered in 1537. The first similar New World organization was the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, founded in 1638. Exclusive little societies of fifty to one hundred enthusiastic and relatively affluent men, the volunteer organizations kept the martial spirit alive in regions more and more remote from immediate danger.

Paradoxically, trainbands and regiments were not combat units, rarely functioning in warfare as colonial assemblies organized them on paper. In fact, legislatures did not design the common militia as a fighting force except, perhaps, for extreme local emergencies. Instead it served primarily as an induction center, a training school, and a reservoir of partially trained manpower. Upon reaching the requisite age, a man automatically joined his local trainband; then he underwent periodic training for the next thirty years or so and acquired at least a rudimentary knowledge of military practice. In wartime, authorities formed expeditions by tapping this manpower pool, drawing men out of the trainbands on an individual basis and organizing them into fighting units.

In theory the militia could provide local defense during an emergency, such as an Indian or rival European assault on an exposed settlement. During such crises settlers had little hope of assistance from the colonial government. The unexpected nature of an attack and the poor communications precluded an appeal to the government for timely aid. And the nature of the resulting warfare -- usually little more than guerrilla skirmishes amidst the enveloping wilderness -- placed a premium on local self-reliance. Knowing they might be unable to exert much influence over events in isolated areas, colonial officials delegated a great deal of power to local officials, but this decentralization of authority was of questionable value. Suppose an Indian war party suddenly descended upon a frontier outpost. Even if word of the attack reached local militia officers, travel was so slow that a complete trainband probably could not be mobilized and dispatched in time to save the settlement. Nor would it have been wise to send the trainband out. If all the able-bodied men in an area rushed to one beleaguered location, the entire vicinity would be left unprotected against further enemy depredations. Even for local defense the militia, as organized on paper, was of limited effectiveness.

As a practical solution for the problem of local defense, pioneers adopted a stronghold concept of defense. Garrison houses, blockhouses, and stockades dotted the frontier. When danger threatened, inhabitants crowded into these fortified structures. The men at the loopholes were militiamen, but, few in number, they acted as individuals rather than members of a militia unit. The stronghold concept had disadvantages. Maintaining a large number of people created logistical problems, not only for arms and ammunition but also for food and water. Abandoning homes and farms for the security of a garrison house or stockade left other property vulnerable to destruction. The colonists, in effect, allowed themselves to be surrounded, leaving no avenue for retreat. Fortunately for them, Indians usually lacked the military discipline to conduct siege operations, and strongholds could often survive. Strongholds may have preserved settlers' lives, but the smoky plumes from burning homes, the steady stream of refugees, and the long roll call of abandoned settlements all attested to the militia's inability to provide defense when and where colonists most desperately needed it. The militia failed to perform its theoretical local defense function, and in a war's early stages the frontier invariably retracted toward the more heavily populated seaboard.

The militia was more effective as a local police force or as a standby posse comitatus. It preserved the domestic peace, protected propertied and privileged colonists from the disadvantaged elements within society, and quelled movements against the established political order. Militiamen frequently performed riot control duty. In the South, colonies merged their slave patrols with the militia and converted it into an internal police force to recover fugitive slaves and suppress slave insurrections. New Englanders in essence converted their militia into a civil police by mating it with the night watch. As a final example, when the Regulators of western North Carolina demanded substantial local governmental reforms and defied colonial authority during the late 1760s and early 1770s, the governor mobilized a thousand militiamen, who routed the Regulators at the Battle of Alamance in May 1771. Thus a sharp distinction arose between the militia as a domestic police and a colony's expeditionary military forces.

When authorities launched a military expedition, they did not "call out the militia" per se. Instead they commissioned officers specifically to command the expedition and established manpower quotas for militia districts. Sometimes the commanding officers appointed for an expeditionary force were regular militia officers, but oftentimes they were not. Based upon a formula related to population, the quotas demanded a certain number of men from each affected trainband. Sound reasons supported the quota system. A community needed most of its able-bodied men to defend it from an enemy that often seemed to appear magically where least expected. Settlements also required men at home to plant, tend, and harvest the crops. What good would be accomplished by creating a large army only to have the soldiers in the field and their dependents at home face the grim specter of starvation?

Militia districts filled their quotas by a combination of volunteers, draftees, substitutes, and hirelings, with volunteering being the preferred method. To spur volunteering from among the men in the trainbands, governments usually offered volunteers a bounty. Even lucrative bounties rarely enticed sufficient volunteers, in which case militia officials drafted men out of their trainbands. However, a draftee could avoid service by obtaining a discharge from the governor or a high-ranking militia officer, by providing a substitute, or by paying a commutation fine. Authorities used the money collected from fines to hire additional men or buy arms and ammunition for destitute soldiers or the community arsenal. A draftee unable to obtain a discharge or a substitute and too poor to pay the fine had one last option to avoid soldiering: he could flee. Movement of men from town to town evading wartime service was a common problem.

The men serving in expeditions increasingly came from society's lower classes. Men of wealth and status were often exempt and unlikely to volunteer, and could easily secure a discharge, find a substitute, or pay the commutation fine. In fact, colonies sometimes consciously excluded more prosperous citizens from active duty. For example, in the mid-1750s Virginia sought to raise 1,270 men for service. Local justices of the peace, field officers, and militia captains were to hold a court of inquiry, examining the occupations of men between 18 and 50 on the muster rolls and making a list of all able-bodied men "as shall be found loitering and neglecting to labor for reasonable wages; all who run from their habitations, leaving wives or children without suitable means for subsistence, and all other idle, vagrant, or dissolute persons, wandering abroad without betaking themselves to some lawful employment." The court was also to list "such able-bodied men, not being freeholders or housekeepers qualified to vote at an election of burgesses, as they shall think proper...." A second court would meet the quota by drafting men from among those on the list, which automatically omitted the colony's best citizens.

Yet, as always, colonial military affairs were not subject to easy generalizations, and an acute threat could result in an expeditionary force that more nearly represented a colony's social composition. For example, at a time when Virginia was raising its army almost exclusively from among the poorest elements of its populace, Massachusetts was acting quite differently. Far more immediately threatened by the French in Canada than was Virginia, Massachusetts fielded military forces during the 1750s that were not heavily weighted toward the permanently poor and vagrants but instead reflected the colony's overall social composition.

From whatever social class they came, once enlisted for an expedition the men who filled the ranks believed they had a legal contract with the provincial government that could not be breached without the mutual consent of both parties. Their military ethos contained little of the emphasis on loyalty, subordination, and discipline that characterized European armies. When a colony failed to fulfill its legal obligations by not providing sufficient rum and food, by forcing men to serve beyond the expiration of their term of service, or by demanding additional duties not covered in the initial contract, colonial soldiers felt that their contract was void. Once authorities broke the contract, the troops felt no compunction against staging a mutiny or deserting in mass, even in the midst of a campaign. To the colonial soldiers these actions were legal and sensible, but to British regulars serving alongside the provincials during the colonial wars, such violations of military discipline were intolerable. No wonder British Major General James Abercromby, who observed colonial troops during the French and Indian War, complained that they were "the rif-raf of the continent." All too often they were! Not only were they primarily indigents and down-and-outers, but they did not behave as European professional soldiers thought they should behave.

Expeditions composed of militiamen drawn from the common militia's manpower reservoir represented only one type of military activity. Sometimes authorities sanctioned the formation of ad hoc volunteer companies bearing no official relationship to the militia. Two famous examples occurred in New England during King Philip's War. One company, commanded by Captain Samuel Moseley, was a conglomeration of apprentices, servants, seamen, and even a few convicted pirates who had in fact been captured by Moseley and gained their release from prison by agreeing to serve. Captain Benjamin Church, one of the most remarkable Indian fighters in American history, led the other. In July 1676, the governor of Plymouth Colony authorized Church to raise a volunteer company of about 200 men consisting of not more than 60 whites augmented by approximately 140 friendly Indians. Volunteers, who often came from the lowest social strata, were normally outside the formal militia structure, which excluded Indians, criminals, servants, and men on the move, such as seamen. Bold and aggressive, these men served anticipating a rich reward of captured Indian booty and prisoners, who could be sold as slaves.

Some colonies also periodically tried to develop a static defensive line by building forts along the frontier. Virginia, for example, built four forts in 1645-1646 and undertook similar projects throughout the colonial era. Garrisons raised from the militia manned the strategically situated forts. In contrast to typical militia expeditions, garrison troops served for extended periods of time (up to a year in some cases) and in that respect resembled temporary standing armies. Forts often created more problems than they solved; the wooden structures decayed, they were expensive to build and maintain, garrison troops inevitably suffered from low morale, and perhaps most importantly, Indians easily infiltrated between the forts. To ameliorate this last problem, Virginia also created "scout," or "ranger," units that patrolled the frontier between and beyond the forts on long-range reconnaissance missions, hoping to expose or disrupt attacks before they descended in full force upon settled areas. Thus colonial military forces were extremely diverse. Supplementing the peacetime common militia, from which authorities organized wartime expeditions through a quota system, were volunteer militia units, garrison troops and rangers, and volunteer companies completely outside the militia framework.

During the first seventy years of settlement a series of Indian wars severely tested colonial military institutions. The natives' overall initial reaction to the pale-skinned arrivals was cautious hospitality, but within two decades the whites' land greed, plus a general cultural incompatibility, created open hostility. Before considering the resulting wars, it is necessary to understand Indian methods of warfare, the problems Indian tactics posed for the whites, and the ways in which the Europeans overcame these difficulties.

Before the white man's arrival Indian tribes living along the east coast engaged in endemic warfare, but the fighting was seldom costly in lives or property. Roger Williams correctly observed that Indian warfare was far less bloody than European warfare, and many whites reacted contemptuously to the mild manner in which Indians fought. For instance, Captain John Underhill affirmed that "they might fight seven years and not kill seven men. They came not near one another, but shot remote, and not point-blank, as we often do with our bullets, but at rovers, and then they gaze up in the sky to see where the arrow falls, and not until it is fallen do they shoot again. This fight is more for past-time, than to conquer and subdue enemies." Furthermore, the natives did not wage total war, rarely striking at noncombatants or engaging in the systematic destruction of food supplies and property.

Although Indians were not adept at European-style warfare and generally lacked the political organization to develop strategy, they were superb tactical-level guerrilla warriors. Fighting in small war parties, with each war party keeping on the move and acting in isolation, they repeatedly conducted sophisticated ambushes and raids. Warriors would move stealthily, spread out over a considerable distance to avoid being ambushed themselves, and rapidly concentrate for a whirling attack -- often at night, during storms, or amid dense fog so as to catch their adversaries off guard and confuse them. Then the Indians would vanish into the wilderness. Rarely would they stand and fight if hard pressed; their warrior ethic lacked the European concept of holding a piece of land no matter what the cost in casualties, These hit-and-run tactics baffled and angered the English, who did not lack "courage or resolution, but could not discern or find an enemy to fight with, yet were galled by the enemy."

Indian hit-and-run tactics were dangerous enough when executed with bows and arrows, but became even more deadly when mated with flintlock muskets. Ironically, the Indians were more proficient than the colonists at using flintlocks. Having been taught hunting skills and the use of aimed fire with bows and arrows since childhood, the Indians readily adapted flintlocks to their guerrilla warfare. Colonial legislatures passed laws banning firearms trade with the natives, at times even imposing the death penalty for violators, but Indians managed to acquire European weapons, often through illegal trade. And at least in New England, they learned how to cast bullets, replace worn flints, restock muskets, and make a variety of other repairs. Only one technical capability continued to elude the Indians. They never mastered gunpowder production and therefore experienced frequent powder shortages.

In contrast to the Indians, few whites had been hunters in the Old World or knew how to shoot well. Moreover, the colonists were steeped in formal battlefield tactics, which included firing unaimed mass volleys rather than aiming at individual targets. These may have worked well on Europe's open plains but were virtually useless in the dense North American forests against an enemy that neither launched nor endured frontal assaults. Yet most colonists made little effort to adjust to Indian-style warfare. On muster days militiamen practiced the complicated motions and maneuvers prescribed by European drill manuals. One commonly-used drill book described fifty-six steps for loading and firing a musket. In battle many militiamen never lived to crucial Step Forty-three: "Give fire breast high." And despite blundering into ambush after ambush, colonists persisted in marching in close order, so that, as one Indian said, "it was as easy to hit them as to hit an house." The settlers' reluctance to adjust to New World conditions was partly psychological. They considered Indian warfare barbaric; if Europeans fought in the same way, would they not also be barbarians?

The English compensated for the militia system's weaknesses by employing Indian allies, by waging ruthless warfare against the foundations of Indian society, and at least in a few cases by adopting Indian methods. Almost all Indian wars pitted the English and some Indians against other Indians. The natives were not united, but instead consisted of tribes, subtribes, and quasi-independent bands, many holding ancient grudges against each other and constantly struggling over territorial rights, power, and the loyalty of potential allies. When Europeans arrived in the New World, many Indian tribes sought them as allies against their traditional rivals, and the English recognized that animosities among Indians could be advantageously exploited. Colonists also learned that Indians were the only match for other Indians. Whites were so inept at forest warfare that sending an expedition against the Indians without accompanying Indian allies invited disaster. The English especially needed friendly Indians as scouts to prevent an expedition from stumbling into an ambush, but native allies were also invaluable as spies, guides, and fighters.

Even when augmented by friendly Indians, colonists had a difficult time bringing the swift-moving Indians to decisive battle, and the real objective of colonial strategy became the Indians' villages and food supplies. Shepherded by Indian scouts, often guided by Indian informers, and invariably accompanied by Indian warriors, colonial forces struck at Indian villages, killing old men, women, and children, burning homes, and destroying crops and food caches. Men who belie

Excerpted from For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America by Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski
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