The birth of armed militias in Bucks County history

My introduction to militia history was from a man in Spinnerstown on the Bucks-Montgomery border. He portrayed a Revolutionary War minuteman and skilled woodsman who taught me the proper way to throw a tomahawk. Also how to fire a flint-lock rifle. From him, I could visualize how Pennsylvania militias might have served George Washington.

I thought of this when Stephen Willey of the Durham Historical Society in Upper Bucks suggested a column on colonial-era militias given the attention to militia groups involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington. What I discovered is not what I expected – at least in Pennsylvania.

The Quaker colony from its founding in 1682 was decidedly passivist. It had no standing army. There were no laws to create one. So when conflict with France allied with Indians broke out in western Pennsylvania in the 1740s, something had to be done. Ben Franklin from Philadelphia founded a group of volunteer militia called the Associators to defend the frontier which they did.

Years later when Congress initiated war with England, Pennsylvania depended on Associators to guard arsenals in Easton and Reading. But Washington, commander-in-chief of the Continental Army’s 14,000 federal soldiers, viewed such militias with disdain. At the outset of the Revolution, he quilled a letter to his nephew expressing grave concern over “the conduct of the militia, whose behavior and want of discipline has done great injury to the other troops, and who never had officers, except in few instances, worth the bread they eat.”

John Adams in a letter to his wife expressed sarcasm. “Wherever men of war have approached, our militia have most manfully turned their backs and run away, officers and men, like sturdy fellows; and their panics have sometimes seized the regular regiments.”

After devastating losses in New York and a retreat across New Jersey to Bucks County, Washington remained distrustful. In a letter from Morrisville’s Summerseat mansion to Pennsylvania’s recruitment committee, he fretted, “Instead of giving any Assistance in repelling the Enemy, the Militia have not only refused to obey your general Summons and that of their commanding Officers, but I am told exult in the Approach of the Enemy and our late Misfortunes. I beg leave to submit to your Consideration whether such people are to be entrusted with Arms in their Hands? If they will not use them for us, there is the greatest Reason to apprehend they will against us, if Opportunity offers.”

Pennsylvania responded by passing the Militia and Test Acts of 1777 requiring everyone to declare an oath of allegiance to the new nation, and instituting a compulsory draft of every white male between the ages of 18 and 53. Those who refused to serve had to pay a hefty fine or find replacements.

Though many militiamen served with distinction, their service was controversial in Pennsylvania. Some operated as private police forces for powerful politicians. Thievery and looting were common. The soldiers constantly harassed passivist Moravian settlements that rejected the loyalty test. Moravian Bishop Ettwein of Bethlehem denounced it as “the most absurd, tyrannical & wicked Law that ever was passed in a free Country.” The worst atrocity occurred in 1782 when a large deployment of Pennsylvania militiamen massacred 100 Indians at the Moravian mission of Gnadenhatten in Ohio.

According to historian Thomas Verenna, general distrust of the militias “led to situations where the militia were the ones who took away security and threatened liberty rather than defending it.” Today the idea of citizen militias standing by has many disciples. They hold tight to a literal interpretation of the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment and what Thomas Jefferson declared in his address to Congress as president in 1808: “For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.”

Rogue behavior, however, is the risk we run.

Sources include “Revolutionary War Records Overview” published by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and “The Darker Side of the Revolution” by Thomas Verenna published by The Journal of the American Revolution in 2014.

Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com. His “Bucks County Adventures” is available at book stores in Newtown, Doylestown and Lahaska.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: First militia started in PA to protect western border in French-Indian War