The greatest cultural influence on the area which became the United States was from England, and the first settlers brought English military ideas with them. Medieval Englishmen believed that every free, able-bodied male had the obligation to fumish his own weapons and tum out under local leaders to defend the realm. By the late 1500s, when Englishmen were beginning to plan colonies in the New World, the militia had been separated into two categories. Most individuals would serve only in a crisis, such as the approach of the Spanish Armada in 1588. However, a select element were grouped into "trained bands" and voluntarily held periodic musters for training.
During the middle of the seventeenth century, a civil war between the Royalists and Parliamentarians convulsed the English. Both sides created armies, and, after the execution of King Charles I, the country endured a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell. When the monarchy was restored in 1660, the trained bands were allowed to deteriorate, and a small permanent, or "standing," army was created.
Most Englishmen had a horror of standing armies. They were expensive to maintain, which meant higher taxes, and they could too easily become a domestic police force for the central government. But in England, the growing power of Parliament preserved civilian control over the king's small army; in the English colonies, the elected assemblies, or legislatures, would do the same with respect to their militias.
The first colonists in Virginia (1607), Plymouth (1620), Massachusetts Bay (1629), and Connecticut (1636) brought English military traditions with them. They also drew upon the experience of earlier English colonists in Ireland, protecting themselves from hostile natives by living within wooden forts and organizing themselves into a militia. The little trading post at Jamestown, to maintain the discipline necessary to survive in the Virginia wilderness, organized itself into a virtual regimental garrison within two years of its founding, complete with companies and squads. Plymouth, on the advice of Miles Standish, its military advisor, formed four companies of militia to maintain order and patrol its borders. The larger and wealthier Massachusetts Bay Colony profited from the experiences of the earlier settlers. In 1629 its first expedition left England for Salem with a militia company already organized and equipped with the latest weapons. Although standing regiments were not to appear in England until 1642, by December 1636 Massachusetts Bay had grouped its fifteen companies into three regional regiments. Other colonies followed suit: Maryland and Plymouth in 1658, Virginia in 1666, and Connecticut in 1672.
Regional patterns emerged fairly soon in the colonial militia. In the Chesapeake Bay area, a plantation economy based on tobacco took hold, leading to a rural settlement pattern. This meant that it took a broad geographic area to form a company, and a county normally had only one regiment. In New England, an economy based on trade and Puritan religious convictions, led to a town-based residential system. With their denser population, the New Englanders could form more than one regiment in each county.
Pennsylvania remained an exception to the general pattern. Settled originally by pacifist Quakers, it did not pass a law establishing a mandatory militia until 1777.
Relations between the earliest English colonists and the Indians were reasonably peaceful, especially in Plymouth Colony. But the colonists' desire for more and more land made hostility inevitable. The Indian wars in Virginia in 1622 (in which 25% of the colonists were massacred) and 1644, and the Pequot War in New England in 1637 began a pattern which was to continue on the American frontier for almost 250 years.
The Indians would attack white settlements, usually the smaller and more isolated outposts. The militia would gather to defend the settlements and to pursue the Indians deep into their own territory. Temporary detachments were used for sustained operations in the wildemess, minimizing the economic hardship on individual militiamen.
This was a very different type of warfare than that going on in Europe at the same time, and it meant changes in tactics and equipment. Body armor of metal and leather was fine for a European battlefield, but it was a hindrance when chasing Indians through the woods and swamps of eastern North America. And the European emphasis on drill and coordinated movement gave way to the individual initiative required for frontier warfare.
When immediate danger subsided as a colony matured, the standing militia remained active, although it tended to serve as an institution to train young men in the art of war, as a source of recruits or draftees, and as a law-enforcement agency. A supplemental institution emerged for most combat mission in the wars of the 1670s: hired volunteers to range the frontiers, patrolling between outposts and giving early warning of any Indian attack. Other volunteers combined with friendly Indians for offensive operations deep in the wilderness, where European tactics were ineffective. The memoirs of the most successful leader of these mixed forces, Benjamin Church, were published by his son Thomas in 1716 and represent the first American military manual.
The volunteer concept matured in the major colonial wars of the 18th century. Regiments completely separate from the militia were raised for specific campaigns. These units, called Provincials, were patterned after regular British regiments and were recruited from the militia, often during normal drill assemblies. The most famous Provincials were formed by Major Robert Rogers of New Hampshire during the French and Indian War (1754-1673). His "rangers" performed reconnaissance for the Regulars invading Canada and conducted occasional long-range raids against the French and their Indian allies.
The Coming of the Revolution
In the years which followed the French and Indian War, the British government adopted a series of policies which altered the traditional relationship between England and the American colonies. Seven years of war in Europe and North America had cost Britain millions of pounds, and the British people were being taxed to pay for the war. Naturally, the British Parliament felt that the American colonists, who had benefited from the war, should help pay their share. But when efforts were made to regulate the colonial economy for the benefit of the mother country after years of benign neglect, the colonists were furious at what they saw as assaults on their traditional liberties.
In order to protect the territories (including most of what is now Canada) won from the French, and to try and maintain some sort of peace between warring settlers and Indians on the frontier, British troops were stationed permanently in North America for the first time. The colonists, with their traditional English suspicion of standing armies, suspected that their real purpose was to enforce unpopular legislation such as the Stamp Act of 1768.
Colonial politicians began agitating for serious militia reforms to create a force capable of standing up to the British Army. Colonists organized voluntary military companies for extra training. In 1774, when the political situation was at a boiling point, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety (in effect a "shadow" government representing the revolutionary, or Patriot, sympathizers) created a select militia force ready to turn out at a minute's notice. They were called "minutemen."
Lexington and Concord
Tensions reached the breaking point in New England. On April 18, 1775, a British column of some 600 men set out in the dark from Boston. Massachusetts revolutionary leaders had begun assembling military supplies, and the British had orders to proceed to Concord and seize any material found there. Early the next morning the column encountered a company of militia drawn up near their route of march. Neither side wished to provoke trouble, but both needed to make a political statement. The British deployed to confront the militiamen, and ordered them to disperse. Just as the colonists were beginning to comply, a shot rang out. Seconds later the British opened fire, leaving a number of Americans dead and wounded.
No one knows for sure who fired the "shot heard round the world," although it was probably a junior British officer simply trying to gain the attention of a milling crowd. This incident and a later engagement just outside Concord touched off a general battle as the small British column attempted to withdraw. Several hundred British soldiers died or were wounded during the long march back to Boston as the militia forces of eastern Massachusetts swarmed out to harass them. Only the appearance of a relief column, and the lack of any central control over the militia, enable the survivors to escape total annihilation. The American colonies' revolt against the mother country had begun.