Citizens in Arms: The Army and Militia in American Society to the War of 1812

by Lawrence Delbert Cress

This first study to discuss the important ideological role of the military in the early political life of the nation examines the relationship between revolutionary doctrine and the practical considerations of military planning before and after the American Revolution. Americans wanted and effective army, but they realized that by its very nature the military could destroy freedom as well as preserve it. The security of the new nation was not in dispute...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080781508X
• ISBN13: 9780807815083
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Why a militia?

How did the US obtain its enduring affection [some would say obsession] with citizens being able to possess firearms? Cress tackles this topical issue by looking back at the pre-Revolutionary colonies and the early US, up to the War of 1812. He shows detailed arguments put forth at that time - essentially that a militia should always be available at short notice, to defend the public interest. A frontier mentality necessitated by sprawling territories, and a concomitent weak central British rule, before independence. When the settlers would have to face hostile natives and occasionally other European powers. After the Revolution, Cress explains the attitudes towards a permanent standing army. Specifically the fear that it might trample liberty. To counteract this, the army was kept small, and a citizens' militia was kept as a reserve. There is a little irony here. Part of the reason for the attitude was the behaviour of the British government before the Revolution, and the sometimes hamfisted way it used the British army to enforce its decrees. Actions which help trigger the Revolution. So this was seen as a possibility too, if the Americans kept a large army. It turns out that this attitude was also common amongst Britons. By continental European standards, the British army was usually kept quite small, for much the same reason.