Area # 21  RTKBA                    14 Jul 95  05:52    Message # 4041
From    : Andy Kellett
To      : All                                           
Subj    : An Armed Citizenry 1/3

                           from the Internet
========================================================================
1 of 3
Kopels Komment     Gun World, January, 1993

AN ARMED CITIZENRY

The Second Amendment is meaningless, gun prohibitionists claim, because
armed citizens cannot possibly defeat professional standing armies. Gun
prohibitionists sneer at the thought of foolish citizens clad in
hunter's orange charging at tanks and brandishing their "Saturday Night
Specials." Yet, for freedom-loving citizens to prevail against a
powerful standing army, the citizens need never defeat the army in
head-to-head combat, as the history of American Revolution illustrates.

Last month, we looked at the prelude to the American Revolution. The
British expected their well-trained standing army to smash the upstart
Americans quickly. The Americans predicted their militias -- comprised
of all the adult males in a given locality -- would speedily drive the
Redcoats into the sea. The reality of the American Revolution upset both
sides' expectations.

After the April 1775 American defeat at Lexington and victory at
Concord, the British and Americans fought next at Breed's Hill north of
Boston. The British army commander and the American militia commanders
both made drastic errors. The battle was a draw.

To the Americans, a draw was the same as victory. In fact they had
inflicted twice as many casualties as they suffered. What the British
called the "rabble in arms" had held its own against the mighty British
army.

In American memory, the draw at Breed's Hill became the glorious Battle
of Bunker Hill. The official American national myth that the citizen
militiaman was always superior to the professional soldier grew stronger
than ever. But subsequent events deflated the self-congratulatory
American myth.

The Massachusetts militia had acquitted itself well when fighting to
defend its own territory. But American citizen/soldiers, being reluctant
to follow the discipline typical of professional European soldiers,
performed poorly on extended campaigns.

As in the French and Indian War, the Americans declined to go far from
home for very long. Even Americans who formally enlisted in the national
Continental Army resisted signing up for more than a year. At the end of
their year, they would leave for home and farm in mid-campaign.

The inadequacy of the Continental Army was made painfully clear in the first
winter of the war, when an American force headed north to seize Canada.
The late 1775 expedition was a disaster. In January 1776, half the
American enlistments were set to expire. The American generals had to
launch a desperate -- and futile -- attack on Montreal on December 30
during a blizzard before their "army" melted away.

A European professional army would have succeeded where the Americans
failed, because the European soldiers, terrified of their commanders,
would not have dared to walk away from the army in the middle of a
campaign.

Because Americans insisted on returning to their farms at least once a
year, or never wanting to stray far in the first place, George
Washington and the Continental Congress never had a Continental Army as
large as they wanted. Ironically, the American refusal to enlist in
long-term service in their national army was to the better. Local militia
service enabled men to fight the British sometimes, and keep the economy
going the rest of the time.

Furthermore, the British could move faster than the Continental Army
since the British controlled the waters and could travel by sea.
Accordingly, the British could usually choose when to fight the
Continental Army, and when to avoid it. But the British had no such
advantage over the American militia.

Since the militia was comprised of every able-bodied adult male in an
area, the militia could arise wherever the British deployed. Thus, no
matter how fast the British could move, they could almost never move
fast enough to avoid a confrontation with the militia.

So, ironically, because most Americans were too independent to enlist in
the Continental Army, and because Americans stayed near their farms most
of the time, the American fighting effort was endowed with a tactical
mobility to match the British mobility at sea. Wherever there were
Americans, there was a militia ready to take up arms whenever the
Redcoats ventured nearby.

In other words, the insistence of the people on staying rooted to their
land gave the American war effort a quick reaction time that it otherwise
would have lacked if the Americans, like their European cousins, had
been disciplined enough to serve en masse in a professional uniformed
army. As historian Daniel Boorstin put it, "The American center was
everywhere and no where -- in each man himself."

                      [continued in next message]

... What the gov't wants, I hold dear: MY freedom, MY guns...
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12


--- QScan v1.12b / 01-0432
 * Origin: OptiNet-->BBS 205-553-7666 14 lines *Full Internet* (1:3606/10.1)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Area # 21  RTKBA                    14 Jul 95  05:52    Message # 4042
From    : Andy Kellett
To      : All                                           
Subj    : An Armed Citizenry 2/3

2 of 3

When British regulars met American militias on open fields, the British
training usually prevailed. At the battle of Kip's Bay in Manhattan, the
Connecticut militia broke and fled in terror, despite General
Washington's attempts to restore order. Militia collapsed again at the
battle of Camden in 1780.

The Americans could afford some losses in battle; a large fraction of
the adult white male population was available to fight British who
invaded their region. British soldiers, though, were more difficult to
replace, since they had to be imported from across the Atlantic.

The British held major coastal cities such as Boston and New York City,
but control of the vast interior proved impossible. The militiamen had
learned warfare from the Indians; in the mountains and swamps and
forests, they denied use of the country to the British. Because the
American militiamen were not part of a professional standing army
fighting far away from home, they had the advantages of intimate
knowledge of the terrain where they fought, of support from the
non-combatant population in the area and of a compelling incentive to
defend their state, county and farms against foreign aggression.

After the 1780 capture of Charleston, the British quickly seized more
towns in the interior along the Savannah River. In the country around
the river, chaotic civil war broke out between Tories loyal to the king
and patriots seeking independence. As a result, the Redcoats could
control nothing beyond the cities on the banks of the Savannah.

Fear of the "countryside in arms" led the British War Office to ban
expeditions to almost all of the American interior in 1778.

The militia had good days to match the bad ones. At the battle of
Cowpens in South Carolina, the militia, under the command of Brigadier
General Daniel Morgan, pretended to break and run after firing a
few shots. The British rushed ahead to rout the fleeing militia. With the
British committed, American cavalry swept in on the left and right of
the attacking Redcoats. In front of the Redcoats, the militia stopped
"fleeing" and took up prearranged positions in the line with the
Continental Army. General Morgan's double envelopment destroyed almost
all the British army on the field that day. Only a small force of
cavalry reserves escaped.

In the 1777 Saratoga campaign, the British attempted to move down from
Canada and up from New York City to meet on the Hudson River, hoping to
isolate New England from the rest of the colonies. The militia of
upstate New York and Vermont rose in large numbers wherever the British
appeared. Ready to fight, the American populace had been outraged at the
murder of a beautiful white woman by Indians who had been armed by the
British.

British General Burgoyne complained, "Wherever the King's forces point,
militia in the amount of three or four thousand people assemble in 24
hours; they bring with them their subsistence, etc., and the alarm over,
they return to their farms..."

At the battle of Freeman's Farm, near Saratoga, New York, riflemen
hiding in the woods killed many Redcoats. Weeks later, when Burgoyne was
in full retreat from New York, the militia sliced his supply lines. His
6,000 men and all their military provisions fell into the hands of the
Americans.

After the British disaster in the Saratoga campaign, the great British
statesman, William Pitt -- an advocate of reconciliation with America --
told the British House of Lords, "If I were an American, as I am an
Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I would
never lay down my arms -- never -- never -- NEVER! You cannot conquer
America." (Speech in the House of Lords, Nov. 18, 1777)

In 1778-79, the Kentucky militia, led by George Rogers Clark, captured
key British posts on the Wabash River in the future states of Indiana
and Illinois. The victories helped legitimize the United States' claim
to all British territory east of the Mississippi, which Britain later
recognized in the 1783 peace treaty.

The militiamen brought their privately owned guns to battle. For the
most part, they fought with the Kentucky rifle, which had a shattering
effect against British Redcoats. The British muskets could fire three
times as fast as the Kentucky rifle, and were well-suited for use by
disciplined linear formations in open terrain. Redcoats were not
expected to aim, depending instead on the cumulative effect of rapid
fire. American guerrillas, though, did not fight formal pitched battles,
but instead hid behind rocks and trees and sniped at the enemy.

The Kentucky rifle was effective only in the hands of a skilled
marksman, who could hit a target the size of a man's head from 200 yards
away. A lucky shot could travel 400 yards. The rifling of the gun's
bore, which gave the bullet a spin, vastly extended the effective combat
range for gunmen. The rifle was actually invented by the Pennsylvania
Dutch, not by Kentuckians -- and the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually
German, not Dutch.

The American riflemen specialized in sniping at the British officers,
causing them considerable apprehension, and distracting them from
command. The British officers, in turn, denied the American riflemen
quarter, considering them executioners rather than honorable soldiers.

                      [continued in next message]

... Washington D.C.: living proof that gun control doesn't work!
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12


--- QScan v1.12b / 01-0432
 * Origin: OptiNet-->BBS 205-553-7666 14 lines *Full Internet* (1:3606/10.1)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Area # 21  RTKBA                    14 Jul 95  05:52    Message # 4043
From    : Andy Kellett
To      : All                                           
Subj    : An Armed Citizenry 3/3

3 of 3

The bitter experience of fighting an armed populace left the British
with a clear understanding of the threat that armed citizens pose to an
unpopular dictatorship. When British victory appeared in sight in 1777,
Colonial Undersecretary William Knox authored a plan "What Is Fit To Be
Done In America?" Knox suggested establishment of a state church,
unlimited tax power, a governing aristocracy, a standing army, repeal of
the militia laws, a ban on arms manufacture, a ban on arms imports
without a license, and "...the Arms of all the People should be taken
away." (Sources of American Independence, vol. 1 (1978), p. 176)

Sadly, almost every one of Undersecretary Knox's 1,777 suggestions for
enslaving America has become law in modern America, or is currently
advocated by many powerful politicians.

As Continental Army General George Washington often noted, the militia
could rarely hold its own against regular troops. Echoing the criticisms
made by British commanders, Washington complained that the
militia's"...want of discipline and refusal, of almost every kind of
restraint and Government, have produced...an entire disregard of that
order and subordination necessary to the well doing of an army." (Letter
to the President of the Continental Congress, New York, Sept. 2, 1776)

But the militia did not have to fight by European standards and win
battles against disciplined linear formations. Because almost every free
male was armed, the American resistance existed wherever the American
people lived. The British occupied every major port. When they fought,
they usually won. But defeating America was not simply a matter of
capturing its major cities or crushing its uniformed army.

With every American a militiaman, the British could triumph only by
occupying the entire United States, and that task was far beyond their
manpower resources. The Americans never really defeated the British; the
war could have continued long past Yorktown. After seven years of
winning most of the battles but getting no closer to winning the war,
the British simply gave up.

The experience of the American Revolution has been repeated over and
over throughout the world. Citizen armies can rarely defeat an unpopular
government outright, but they can deny the government the fruits of
ruling the country and force the government to expend more and more
resources in a futile effort to conquer an entire population. The Jewish
freedom fighters who drove the British out of Palestine in the 1940s,
the guerrillas who helped topple dictatorships in Nicaragua in the 1970s
and 1980s, the Yugoslav partisans who tied down a sixth of the Nazi Army
during World War II, and the Afghani guerrillas who resisted the
invading Soviet Army in the 1980s have taught despots the lesson
American militiamen taught the Redcoats 200 years ago: An armed and
determined citizenry can make even the world's most powerful armies rue
the day they attempted to rule a nation against its will.

Further reading: Much of the information in this article is based on
Robert W. Coakley's and Stetson Conn's book, The War of the American
Revolution, (Washington: Center of Military History United States Army,
1975), which is available in many Government Printing Office bookstores,
and can be special ordered at any conventional bookstore.


... If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he'd puke on Sarah Brady!!
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12


--- QScan v1.12b / 01-0432
 * Origin: OptiNet-->BBS 205-553-7666 14 lines *Full Internet* (1:3606/10.1)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
