Lexington and Concord: A well regulated militia

A musket in one hand. A plow by his side.

New England "Minuteman"

There is a history to militias and the right to bear arms.

Journalist Tam Moore visited the Boston area to witness the college graduation of his grandson on Monday. The Ukrainian ambassador was the speaker at the Boston College commencement. Moore made a history-themed vacation out of this trip and went on a Boston-area excursion every day. I published an "Easy Sunday" Guest Post last weekend, where he described some of the places he had seen on the Freedom Trail. The next days he visited Harvard and the JFK library.  

Today he describes the history of Minutemen. Colonial "irregulars," i.e. settlers out of uniform fighting under the command of local officers, skirmished with the British at Lexington and Concord. They fired from cover at the British soldiers as the Redcoats took casualties as they marched back to Boston. The Minutemen were breaking that era's rules of regular-order warfare. They were citizen soldiers, the militia.

Tam Moore has been doing journalism for 65 years, going back to his time as a reporter for the Oregon State University newspaper. He was a TV journalist for KOBI, a Jackson County Commissioner, and a print reporter for the Capital Press.

Guest Post by Tam Moore

For decades I’ve ignored the tension between the two clauses in the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This past week as I toured the North Bridge historic site in the Town of Concord, Massachusetts, the tension came into focus, aided by an impromptu bit of commentary from Charlie Bahne, our tour guide.

Bahne is an historian, author, and since he graduated from MIT decades ago, a professional tour guide in the Greater Boston area. For a refresher in U.S. History, the North Bridge over the Concord River is where at about 9:30 a.m. on April 19, 1775, British Regulars and local militiamen shot at each other for the second time in a day. The first shots came about 5 a.m. at Lexington Green, 10 miles away on the road from Boston to Concord. Eight colonials, called to the green by peeling of church bells, died in a volley fired by the British.

Both sides in this run-up to the Revolutionary War regrouped after exchanging shots. They kept their cool. Then British troops, on a mission to seize gunpowder and weapons stockpiled by the colonial militia, marched west toward the Concord targets identified by their spies. When shots were exchanged at the Concord River, the shooting continued. That day, and for over seven years after.

Militiamen by the thousands took potshots at the retreating British for much of 17 miles back to the safety of Boston. War continued until the Treaty of Paris in 1783 birthed the United States. The Second Amendment says “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Bahne

Bahne, our tour guide, was standing beneath the famed statue of the colonial minuteman at Concord Bridge. He told us that Massachusetts Colony had a tradition dating back to the Pilgrims of 1620. Every male from 16 to 60 years old was to have a firearm and be part of the militia which defended their settlement. It worked as the colony expanded inland on land that was home to Native Americans. It worked on a larger scale when militia from several colonies were mobilized during the near-decade-long French and Indian War. Militias fought with the British against the French and their native allies.

In the unrest following Britain’s efforts to get the Colonies to pay part of the costs for that war, Bahne said some New England towns formed an elite unit of their militias – the Minutemen. They pledged to drill weekly, keep muskets handy and hurry to a pre-determined rallying point if the town alarm sounded. At Concord that morning, Minutemen rallied on a hill above North Bridge. They saw smoke coming from the town center, where in the main street British troops burned seized supplies. The Minuteman commander ordered his company to the town they thought was afire. From 96 to 120 British troops – the record is fuzzy on the number—guarded the North Bridge the Minutemen had to cross to reach the town center. Two Minutemen died as the British shot, and the Minuteman’s commander ordered his men to return fire.

Charlie Bahne describes the Minuteman commitment. That was a well-regulated militia at work. Casualties for both sides are estimated at 120 killed, 400 wounded. By the time the British troops reached Boston that evening, an estimated 4,000 colonial militiamen were on the scene. Within days, the “New England Army,” as they called themselves, numbered 10,000 men from a half-dozen colonies. The British were trapped in Boston by the well-regulated militia pledged to defend colonial rights to self-government.

On the tour bus taking us back to Boston that afternoon, Bahne was recounting capabilities of the basic infantry muskets used by both sides.

Trained soldiers who made up cartridges of shot and gunpowder beforehand could fire perhaps once every 20 seconds. Militiamen who hadn’t made up cartridges would fire once, then run into the woods, reload and jog to a new firing position. “When you think about the Second Amendment (to keep and bear arms) that’s the kind of weapons they were thinking about...technology of weapons has changed a lot since that time.”

Warren Burger, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, kicked up a public fuss about present-day gun control in 1991, saying on television “The gun lobby interpretation of the Second Amendment is one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat fraud, on the American people by special interest groups
that I have seen in my lifetime.” He likened government regulation of cars and boats – and their operators – to legislation needed. “Sale and use of guns should be regulated, just as driving a car is regulated. . . .”

When the contemporary Supreme Court again took up gun control (District of Columbia v. Heller 554 U.S. 570 [2008]), a 5-4 decision found that D.C. could not lawfully ban a homeowner from having a handgun. The court went further, finding a person doesn’t have to be a militia member to own a weapon. Just last year the high court, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing for the majority, found that governments can’t require concealed weapons permits because “prudent ordinary citizens” need a means of self-defense (New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen.).

For legal “originalists” who say they interpret the Constitution on how they perceive framers of that document thought at the time particular language was adopted, it appears the tension between need for a well-regulated militia and a right to bear arms has been forgotten – in favor of bearing arms regardless of the consequences.

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