The Yankee Soldier's Might: the District of Maine and the Reputation
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The Yankee Soldier’s Might: The District of Maine and the Reputation of the Massachusetts Militia, 1800–1812 joshua m. smith N the spring of 1806, the residents of Portland, Maine, I were treated to an unusual display of street theater when militiaman Noah Harding reported for his scheduled muster. Harding wore three waistcoats of various colors and trousers hanging obscenely low, both adorned with bows and ribbons; on his face were outrageously large spectacles and on his feet boots covered in mold; a large dried codfish protruded from his knapsack, its tail extending well over his shoulder. It was widely agreed that he looked like a “deserter from a mad house.” Word had preceded Harding’s arrival, and a crowd had gathered. But his officers had also heard about Harding’s plan to embarrass them, and they had prepared a surprise of their own. They arrested him and, at the head of Fish Street, mounted him on an eight-foot-high “horse,” where he was forced to sit for an hour with his hands tied behind his back. Unrepentant, Harding pretended to canter on the “horse,” and he called out mock toasts to his officers. After the event passed, Harding sued his lieutenant. He was apparently unsuccessful, however, I thank Brigadier General Leonid Kondratiuk, Director, Historical Services, the Adjutant General’s Office of Massachusetts; Larry Glatz of Harrison, Maine; Lincoln Paine of Portland, Maine; and Alan Taylor of the University of California, Davis, for their support and assistance. I also acknowledge the Massachusetts Historical Society, which administers the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium grant program, which helped fund the research for this essay, and the staff of the Maine Historical Society for their kind assistance. The New England Quarterly,vol.84,no.2 (June 2011). C 2011 by The New England Quarterly. All rights reserved. 234 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00088 by guest on 02 October 2021 YANKEE SOLDIER’S MIGHT 235 and a court martial subsequently found the officer innocent of 1 any illegality in disciplining the difficult private. Harding’s demonstration, although unusually colorful, was not unique. Militiamen regularly protested mandatory musters and overbearing officers. In doing so, they drew attention to divisions in their units, divisions that reflected those in the larger society of the early American republic: the propertied versus the working class, front-country commercial villages ver- sus backcountry agrarian squatters, Federalists versus Republi- cans, and proponents of national versus state control. Involved in policing at least as much as in formal military activities, racially exclusive, deeply parochial, varying widely in uniform and equipment, often at odds with the national government, frequently ill disciplined, and buffeted by partisan politics, the 2 militia was in an increasing state of disarray. In Massachusetts, the militia had long been a well-respected institution, but as the memory of the struggle for independence faded, internal dissensions spread, especially in the commonwealth’s far-flung District of Maine (which did not become a separate state until 1820), weakening the militia just as the nation was once again drifting toward war with England. The Massachusetts Ideal Among the colonial militias, Massachusetts’ was the best or- ganized, best equipped, and best regarded, a commonly held perception that signaled the colony’s commitment to the insti- tution. The Massachusetts militia had its early roots in medieval England, where every able-bodied man was legally required to keep arms, but it was Elizabeth I who initiated training and equipping civilians to defend the kingdom in 1572.Mas- sachusetts Bay had a militia by 1636, its officers nominated by 1 Portland Gazette, 13 October and 3 November 1806, reproduces the lieutenant’s court martial and his lengthy response to Harding’s actions. 2 See Joseph Williamson, Alfred Johnson, and William Cross Williamson, History of the City of Belfast in the State of Maine (Portland: Loring, Short and Harmon, 1913), p. 425; George Augustus Wheeler, History of Brunswick, Topsham, and Harpswell, Maine (Boston: A. Mudge and Sons, 1878), p. 690. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00088 by guest on 02 October 2021 236 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY an election process that was confirmed by the General Court. By 1672 the colony had codified its militia laws, exempting a range of professions and banning outright “Negroes and In- dians” from training or service. After it performed poorly in King Philip’s War, the colony reorganized its militia to favor units composed of volunteers, who were offered incentives to fight, rather than impressed men, who were compelled to do 3 so. That model survived for the remainder of the colonial pe- riod, with the militia proper largely restricted to maintaining order within a colony, while volunteer colonial forces oper- ated in conjunction with British regulars on the frontier or on 4 expeditions. Massachusetts rediscovered the importance of the militia in the years immediately preceding the War of Independence. With Boston occupied by British regulars, leaders like John Hancock and Josiah Quincy repeatedly framed a professional military as an instrument of oppression and the militia as the protector of the rights and liberties of a free society. During the Revolution, the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, the battle at Bunker Hill, and to a degree that at Saratoga contributed to a powerful myth promoted by authors such as Mercy Otis Warren, who connected the militia’s military success to the virtue of the citizen-soldier. After independence, politicians like Elbridge Gerry continued to express their apprehension and contempt of regular military forces while promoting the militia as the guarantor, albeit an admittedly inefficient one, of a free 5 and stable republican constitution. Gerry and leaders of his ilk, supported by parochials who feared loss of prestige, also resisted reforms at the national level that would give the federal government more control over the militia. Many Americans continued to see the militia as a crucial means of protecting themselves against a potentially oppressive 3 Kyle F. Zelner, A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen during King Philip’s War (New York: New York University Press, 2009), pp. 19–39; 216–17. 4 Lawrence Delbert Cress, Citizens in Arms: The Army and Militia in American Society to the War of 1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 5–7. 5 Cress, Citizens in Arms, pp. 44–50, 77, 89–90. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00088 by guest on 02 October 2021 YANKEE SOLDIER’S MIGHT 237 central government or standing military, especially in Mas- sachusetts, where British forces’ occupation of Boston remained 6 a vivid and unhappy memory. In a congressional debate in 1789, Gerry spoke eloquently of the need for a strong militia: What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty. Now it must be evident, that under this provision, together with their other powers, congress could take such measures with respect to a militia, as make a standing army necessary. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in 7 order to raise an army upon their ruins. Proposals to bring the militia under federal authority were resisted across the political spectrum. Two Massachusetts con- gressmen with Maine connections who took that stand in the 1790s exemplify this bipartisan concern: David Cobb, an arch- Federalist with dreams of developing eastern Maine, and his counterpart Henry Dearborn, who had settled in the Kennebec Valley after the Revolution and was an early convert to Jefferso- 8 nian politics. Despite their and others’ reservations, however, Congress passed the federal Militia Act of 1792, which required all white males, with some exceptions, to participate, mandated the organization of militia units, and gave control of the militia to the president, under certain conditions. Massachusetts, like other states, was obliged to conform. A toast at a Jeffersonian Independence Day celebration in 1805 suggests that suspicion remained: “The Militia: Mayiteverbesoorganized,asto supercede the necessity of a Standing Army.” Even as late as 1823, a Massachusetts Federalist proclaimed, “The history of all ages proves that large armies are dangerous to civil liberty. Militia, however large, never can be; for it is composed 6 See Donald Hickey, “New England’s Defense Problem and the Genesis of the Hartford Convention,” New England Quarterly 50 (December 1977): 588. 7 George Billias, Elbridge Gerry, Founding Father and Republican Statesman (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976), p. 232; Don Higginbotham, “The Federalized Militia De- bate,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 55 (January 1998): 39–58, passim. 8 Carl Edward Skeen, Citizen Soldiers in the War of 1812 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), pp. 8–9. Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/TNEQ_a_00088 by guest on 02 October 2021 238 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY of citizens only, armed for the preservation of their own 9 privileges.” New England’s political, intellectual, and military leadership all valued the role of the militia. To founding father John Adams, the militia, along with schools, churches, and town government, was both source and image of civic stability as it reflected and reinforced the social order. As early as 1789,an author noted that in New England “the boys are early taught the use of arms, and make the best of soldiers; nor is there a country upon earth, of equal extent and population, can fur- 10 nish a more formidable army than this part of the Union.” The militia leadership reflected this attitude in public speeches and published orders.