THE MILITIAMAN

Am Shooting Journal ^ | 7/10/20 | F Jardim

[w1n1]

Just after his sixteenth birthday in June of 1776, Private Joshua Meade, the educated son of a successful surgeon, eagerly presented himself to fulfill his civic duty with the militia of Westchester County, New York. In the not-too-distant past, before his constitution failed him, Joshua's father served in the militia as a lieutenant and some of the older men recalled him as a competent and dedicated officer.
On the morning of Joshua's arrival, the regiment's 459 men were preparing to make the day-long march down the Hudson River Valley to New York City to join General Washington’s Continental Army. Joshua kept his mouth shut, as his father advised, and did his best to follow orders.

He had never marched before, or done any soldiering of any kind, but the other men assigned to his mess were quick to help him. They seemed to like him, and immediately bestowed upon him the obviously mock honor of carrying their iron cooking kettle. As the newcomer, and the youngest of his mess, he felt obliged to accept. He was strong and the extra weight was little bother to him at first, but that changed after the first mile. Various experiments finally revealed the cartage of the awkward pot was the least objectionable when it was harnessed in his leather blanket carrier and slung on his back over his knapsack with his untethered blanket stuffed inside.

To meet his militia duty requirements, Joshua had his father’s long 10-gauge fowler, a supply of cartridges loaded with lead balls instead of bird shot, 37 extra balls (all he could cast with the lead on hand the night before), a pound of gunpowder in an artisan-made, weather-tight, screw-top powder horn, a leather hunting bag instead of a cartridge box for his finished ammunition and small items to service his firelock, and a small belt axe instead of a sword. The axe was a more practical and useful tool than the sword, and, according to his father, a hand axe was about as useful in a fight as a sword would be in the hands of a man untrained in swordsmanship.
On his belt he had a sharp and well balanced, bone-handled sheath knife, cleanly shaped and polished by a whitesmith. It was small enough to eat with but still big enough to fight with. On his back he wore his father’s waterproof knapsack containing an extra set of small clothes and stockings, a hunk of soap, a tinderbox, the compass his father used as a militia officer, and six pounds of dried, salted pork, cheese and bread.

GENERAL WASHINGTON STARTED with nearly 20,000 men, some of them newly organized into equally new Continental Army regiments, and the rest state and local militias like Joshua’s. Most had never been to war. Some had experience in frontier-style war against the Indians, and a small measure were veterans of Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and the siege of Boston. But almost no one in America had fought a professional army in the European manner. On the water, Washington had but a handful of sloops operating as privateers.

The British arrived with an awe-inspiring fleet of unprecedented size. It included 10 fearsome ships-of-the-line with 100 or more heavy cannons each, 20 swift frigates, and hundreds of transport ships. Any one of the warships had the firepower to completely destroy New York City. Only nature could limit the scope of the Royal Navy's operations on the water, and the present battleground was surrounded by navigable waterways!
The transports reportedly brought Howe as many as 32,000 men, all seasoned, disciplined troops … all with bayonets. There was nothing Joshua feared more than British bayonets. He wasn't alone in that respect. Many of the militia carried their personal firelocks, and many of these guns were not even capable of mounting a bayonet, had they had any.

By noon the day before, the battle was done and the British had driven them from the field with bayonets, overwhelming General Sullivan’s troops so quickly, Joshua’s regiment was never even called to the line. Without realizing it, he said aloud to himself, "August 27th in the blessed year of our Lord 1776, we lost our Glorious Cause."

HE WAS JARRED back to the present when a strong callused hand cupped over his mouth, while another clutched the back of his neckstock tight. Then he was nose-to-nose with Elijah Oakley. The old man released his neck and gestured for silence with his finger to his lips. At home in Westchester, Old Man Oakley worked as a wood cutter. Here, he was called Corporal Oakley.
At 50 years old, he was at the upper age limit for normal compulsory militia service. Most men under 40, and that was the majority of the militia, had never served beyond the four or five muster days a year legally required for drill and training. Oakley had actually fought in the provisional regiments raised by the colony to support British regulars, against the French and their Indian allies in the Seven Years War. At that time, Joshua was a babe at his mother’s breast. A lot had happened since that time to turn Old Man Oakley against his red-coated former comrades-in-arms. Read the rest of the Militiaman here.

[freedomjusticeruleoflaw]

The unorganized militia is not a fevered dream of radical white supremacists, it is the US code- codified in federal statutes (title 50). Being well-regulated, well-armed, and informed about the dangers facing America is your lawful and legal duty as a freeman. Absent government direction (failure of elected leaders) every able-bodied man SHOULD BE LAWFULLY AND PEACEFULLY ASSEMBLING TO DEFEND HIS COMMUNITY.

[eartick]

Thanks for posting the article. In times like these it is always welcomed to refresh the memories of how this republic was fought for by young and old.