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To: Bubba Ho-Tep
A militia and the US Navy are clean different things. President Madison tried to use this clause and the Militia Act as revised in 1795 to order the Governors of Connecticut and Massachusetts to provide militias to safeguard the coastline in the War of 1812. Neither governor nor their states supported the War of 1812. The governor of Massachusetts referred to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court the question of whether he must comply with Madison's order and that court said no. Neither Connecticut nor Massachusetts obeyed Madison.

Personally, I think those governors should have eagerly cooperated with Madison (on their own respective authorities) against the Brits but the usual gang of banking, commerce and industrial suspects, pining miserably over their lost business opportunities with Great Britain would not hear such a legitimate appeal to patriotism and they actually held a convention at the Old State House in Hartford with an eye toward seceding over their business interests. Meanwhile, the Brits were sacking and burning the White House.

Fortunately, Andrew Jackson and the pirate Jean Laffite routed the Brits at New Orleans and put an end to the last Brit invasion of our nation. Laffite provided naval support but NOT as militia. One might call Jackson's troops militia but they served on land only.

By the time of the War of Northern Aggression, the United States Navy was well-established as a standing navy, a professional fighting force, in no way subject to state governors and fully under the lawful authority of POTUS and Congress. However, blockading ports it claimed to be its own was not lawful.

462 posted on 07/07/2015 10:26:44 AM PDT by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline: Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Society/Rack 'em Danno!)
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To: BlackElk

So it’s your contention that the government can summon the militia to suppress insurrections, but it cannot call upon the active duty military to suppress those same insurrections?


467 posted on 07/07/2015 11:27:26 AM PDT by Bubba Ho-Tep ("The rat always knows when he's in with weasels."--Tom Waits)
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