Unit1Article Russell

2003

This study examines the process of recruitment and the social makeup of activeduty militiamen in seventeenth century New England. King Philip’s War, 1675-1676, was the first military crisis to strike Massachusetts Bay Colony that required mass popular participation. The colonial government responded by impressing over a thousand men to fight, employing a recruitment system that evolved from the time of the colony’s founding in the 1630s. The Massachusetts militia system was a hybrid of the English militia as reorganized by Queen Elizabeth, but with sizeable safeguards put in place against changes made by King Charles I in the 1620s. The founders of Massachusetts saw Charles I’s “Perfect Militia,” especially its recruitment practices, as overly nationalistic, at the expense of local control. Thus, the Massachusetts system was centralized in command, but recruitment decisions were designed to be local, first practiced by elected officers, and, after 1652, by a unique new institution, ...

2018

This dissertation argues that a significant factor contributing to the successes of the American colonial militia against British regulars during the American Revolution was technological: the fusion of adaptive hybrid tactics acquired through contact with the Indians, combined with the superior accuracy and range of the Pennsylvania rifle. Each of these two technologies represent a unique and singular advance, however each by itself did not provide the advantages necessary for American militiamen to achieve tactical parity with British professional soldiers. The fluid maneuver and non-linear aspects of adaptive hybrid tactics were not sufficient to counter the shock effects of British regimental linear infantry tactics absent the long range accuracy and stand-off distances made possible by rifles. Likewise, the significant improvements of the Pennsylvania rifle over contemporary smoothbore muskets in range and accuracy were negated by its unsuitability for conventional infantry tactics. Only when both the technologies of adaptive hybrid tactics and the Pennsylvania rifle were combined would they provide a means for American militiamen to reach tactical parity. The original research presented here focuses on the experience of the Pennsylvania militia formations established and evolving over the course of the French and Indian War, and during the subsequent years of Pontiac’s War, from 1754 to 1765. In particular, the “Black Boys Uprising” of 1765 in the Conococheague Region of Pennsylvania serves as the index case, the first time American militiamen successfully defeated British regulars by employing adaptive hybrid tactics combined with accurate long-range rifle fires. This event demonstrates the means by which American militia might achieve tactical parity with British regulars

Journal of American Studies, 2000

Virginia, Britain's most populous and arguably most important North American colony, once seemed the perfect fit for the “consensus” interpretation of the War of Independence. Indeed, the percentage of white colonists who became loyalists was probably lower in Virginia than in any other rebelling colony. The widespread agreement on secession from Britain should not, however, be mistaken for social consensus. The reality was that revolutionary Virginia was frequently in turmoil. One of the most intriguing of the local insurrections broke out in the northern county of Loudoun just five months before the Declaration of Independence. In February 1776, the county erupted into a heated confrontation pitting gentlemen against their less wealthy neighbours. Lund Washington, who was managing Mount Vernon, warned his cousin, General George Washington, who was outside Boston training his fledgeling patriot army, that the “first Battle we have in this part of the Country will be in Loudon” ...

The Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution,, volume 1, 1805

Typed by hand from the edition of 1805 by Richard Seltzer, modernizing the spelling and punctuation and making other edits for readability. The original three-volume work is 1317 pages long.

Labour / Le Travail, 2003

To be sure, blood has not yet been shed, neither have the Canadas waged war with the parent government, but they have taken a stand which will soon bring them to that course. The people of Canada have passed the Rubicon.... Canada will now demand the full rights of freemen; and they will demand more than England will ever, consistently with its previous course, grant. With this state of things we confess ourselves highly gratified. ONE MIGHT EXPECT that in the autumn of 1837 the fires of revolutionary America had all but expired and that popular energies were entirely focused on the westward movement or the raging depression. Indeed, for most Americans these were the major preoccupations of the day. However, for inhabitants on the northern frontier, which stretched from Maine along the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes to Wisconsin, the fight for land and liberty, and hatred of British colonial oppression, remained burning issues as well. The focus of their concerns was the ensuing rebellions against British Crown rule to the North, led first by Louis-Joseph Papineau in Montréal, Lower Canada (LC), and shortly thereafter by William Lyon Mackenzie in Toronto, Upper Canada (uc). Nearly two decades of fruitless reform struggle against the intransigent rule of the Family Compact in UC and the Chateau Clique in

Law and History Review, 2019

The politics of war severely divided the Virginia Southside during the American Revolution. Laborers, ship pilots and other landless men and women bitterly resented the efforts of the patriot gentry to stop trade with Great Britain and to establish a military force. Planters feared that the presence of the British Navy would encourage slaves to flee or attack their masters. What role did law play in the patriot response to these conditions? This essay uses the case of Josiah Philips, who led a banditti residing in the Great Dismal Swamp, to show how law intersected with class and race in patriot thinking. The gentry's view of the landless as dependent and lacking in self-control and its view of black slaves as posing a constant threat of violence supported the application of special legal regimes suited to these dangers. In particular, Philips was “attainted” by the General Assembly, a summary legislative legal proceeding traditionally employed against offenders who threatened g...

In post-Revolutionary Massachusetts, the militia was a well-respected institution. So when the commonwealth expanded into the far-flung District of Maine, Jeffersonians and Federalists battled one another for the plum. As external forces bred internal dissent, the militia fell into disarray just as the country drifted toward another war with England.

. This review examines recent work on the ideology, culture, and socio-economic composition of early American militaries down to . A fresh place has been given to the role of a Native American culture of war in influencing colonial warfare, although the exact nature of the synthesis of European and Indian traditions remains unclear. Social and economic investigations of the colonial militias and the Continental Army have revealed persistent patterns of expectations of contractual service and subsequent effective resistance when those conditions were not met. Taken together these works have brought us closer to a deeper understanding of the links between culture and military behaviour.

Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2016

Military sources combined with existing ethnohistorical narratives about the experience of Algonquian groups living "behind the frontier" in colonial southern New England provide insight into the effect of imperial warfare on Indian peoples. Virtually every indigenous male in the region after King Philip's War served in the colonial military. Tribes used the service of their men as leverage in negotiations with colonial governments as they attempted to advance their own agendas and protect their sovereignty. Yet Indian soldiers died in large numbers, mainly from infectious disease. Death rates for Indian soldiers were so high that they affected tribal demographics and led to increasing intermarriage and intermixing between the region's Indian and African populations. Other issues faced by Natives in the aftermath of the wars included the long-term injury and disability of veterans, the unresolved fate of men captured during the fighting, and the psychological effect of wartime trauma on veterans. On August 7, 1757, at the height of the French and Indian War (1754-63), known as the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) in Europe, just two days The author thanks Richard D. Brown for comments on an earlier version of this piece. Also, thanks to Marna Carroll for numerous suggestions and to Zydric Purdy and Andrew Pierce for references. The author is grateful for the assistance of staff at a number of institutions, including the Massachusetts State Archives, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the Huntington Library, and the Connecticut Historical Society. Research for this work was made possible through a fellowship from the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, the Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society, the Robert L. Middlekauff and Mayers fellowships from the Huntington Library, and travel grants and a research leave provided by the College of Arts and Humanities at Central Washington University.