The Unpopular History of the United States by Uncle Sam Himself/Chapter 7
VII
THE RUNNING MILITIA
Listen to your Uncle Samuel! Human nature does not change. We are mighty near the same kind of white folks to-day. When men get hot in the collar they’ll reach around and grab the first weapon they can lay hands on to fight with. After scrapping awhile they get tired and want to quit. That’s where discipline comes in. Father used to talk like a Dutch uncle to his children, arguing about the “nobility of the cause of freedom,” “come on boys,” all that sort of thing. Nobody disputed a word he said. “Yep, it’s a bully good cause; everybody ought to be free. But ’t ain’t my business to fight no more than that other fellow’s.” They left it pretty much to George.
Now if you’ve got it well planted in your head, the kind of militia we used during the Revolution, I’ll tell you what they did—just a few things.
At Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill they fought like thunderation, on the independent plan. But volunteers and militia are always shortwinded. After that most of ’em sat down for a spell to stretch out and talk it over.
At Quebec, when their terms were expiring, they got so fidgety to go home and look after the crops that they caused the loss of the expedition and the death of General Montgomery.
They scattered on Long Island before Lord Howe like leaves before the wind.
Washington retired from White Plains because he had no dependable troops. The British on their return to New York incidentally captured Fort Washington with 2,000 American prisoners. General Washington was compelled to cross the Delaware with 5,000 troops because his militiamen were disbanding, and he was powerless to make even a show of resistance.
Yet on the 26th of December, by a brilliant surprise of the Hessians at Trenton, Washington with a force of 2,400, captured 900 prisoners without losing a man.
His victory at Princeton ended the campaign with a loss to the British of 400 killed, wounded, and prisoners.
My son, folks brag mightily on their Uncle Samuel for a sharp horse trader and tightfisted Yankee. Maybe so, maybe so, but it appears to me that in managing my army I have been saving at the spigot and losing at the bung. In 1776 I was paying a force of Continentals and militia numbering 89,661 men. My biggest guess at the redcoats is 34,000 men.
With all that force I should have been able to do something. But my fellows were picked up here and there and yonder; and I never kept them hired long enough to get them field broke. There was no way to swarm a big enough bunch in one place at one time to hit the British. The only offensive operations that we felt sufficiently strong to undertake were in the vicinity of Boston, at Trenton and at Princeton. I squandered millions upon millions on short-term recruits who never stayed in ranks long enough to learn which was hay-foot and which was straw-foot, and were not worth their board and keep.
Throughout the Revolution these raw recruits generally had their running gear set on the hair trigger. Our mistakes in the beginning of the war were repeated over and over again, always the same sad story: at Camden the hasty levies stampeded and ran from the first shot, leaving their steadfast Continental comrades to be slaughtered, the latter losing seventy officers and 2,000 men. This crushing defeat, and the surrender of 5,000 Americans at Charleston—which cost us nearly the whole of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia—were not compensated for by the minor exploits of Marion and Sumter.
Referring to Camden, General Washington wrote: “This event shows the fatal consequences of depending on militia. Regular troops alone are equal to the exigencies of modern war. No militia will ever acquire the habits necessary to resist a regular force. The firmness requisite for the real business of fighting is only to be attained by a constant course of discipline and training.”
Excuse me, son, if I cuss once in a while; don’t put that down. But I get mad every time I think of General Stevens, at the battle of Cowpens, being forced to place a guard behind his militiamen with orders to shoot the first recruit who left his post. Isn’t that a disgraceful proposition for patriots fighting in the cause of freedom?
My boy, I’ve made a lot of mistakes that I had rather forget. But we are now engaged in a war of such magnitude, such devilish ingenuity, that we must look facts squarely in the face. They are ugly facts, yet you can’t blink at ’em, or hide your head in the sand like an ostrich. The ostrich lays himself mighty liable to a rear-end collision. I wish you would tell these facts to every young militiaman in the United States. It won’t hurt their feelings. They are beginning to understand. Every youngster who has spent a few weeks in training camp comes to realize that courage, willingness, and the basic qualities of manhood are insufficient—he must learn how to handle himself.
The famous Light Horse Harry Lee was a great soldier, and he manfully insisted that “that Government is the murderer of its citizens who sends them into the field uninformed and untaught.”