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Play Mission Us Teach mission us Mission US includes extensive teaching materials for each mission. The educator guides feature: What people are saying about Mission US About mission us Mission US is an award-winning educational media project that immerses young people in transformational moments from U.S. history.

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If I was called upon to declare upon Oath, whether the Militia have been
most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole; I should subscribe to the latter.
- George Washington, September 1776
Even before the struggle for American independence ended, two contrasting views of the role of the Revolutionary militia had emerged. Popular opinion, remembering the gallant stand of the Minutemen at Concord and Lexington, held fast to the ideal of the brave citizen soldier as the mainstay of defense. Other Americans however, including many Continental Army veterans, derided the militia's reputation for fleeing in the face of the enemy. The early histories of the Revolution also tended to minimize the contributions of the militia, and one acclaimed account of the war, written as late as 1929, even referred to "the utter failure of the militia system."

More recent studies however have gone a long way toward revising this predominantly negative assessment of the role played by the militia during the war for independence. Although the relative effectiveness of the Revolutionary militia varied from state to state and year to year, this newer scholarship has explored and described some of the crucial achievements of the militia that had been previously unexamined. These historians note that the role of the militia is easily misunderstood and that it has to be judged by different standards than those applied to a professional military force. As part of its long-term exhibit planning process, the The American Revolution Museum at Yorktown has begun researching the role played by the militia during the Revolution, with a special emphasis on Virginia as a test case.

From the earliest years of English settlement, colonists had depended on local groups of part-time citizen soldiers to defend themselves from the Indians or at times to maintain law and order. By the time of the French and Indian War, American colonists had come to rely more on British troops and volunteer provincial units for protection, but even though the militia system had deteriorated, Americans held fast to their faith in the concept of the citizen soldier. Beginning with the Stamp Act crisis and extending throughout the Revolution, the Americans' experience with the British Army only strengthened their hatred of standing armies as implements of monarchy and tyranny and a threat to civilian government.

Although George Washington and others frequently complained about the shortcomings of the militia, some Continental Army officers like Nathanael Greene had come to a more realistic appraisal of the value of these part-time soldiers by the end of the war. While the militia could not be counted on to stand up to trained, regular forces, it could and often did perform other important roles that were less obvious but crucial elements in the winning of independence.

The roots of the various militia systems that developed in the North American English colonies reached far back to Anglo-Saxon Britain. All able-bodied freemen could, in theory, be called up for temporary service by the king to defend their community and the kingdom from invasion. As the earliest successful English settlement in North America, the Virginia colony immediately faced the problem of how to defend itself from possible Spanish attack as well as from the native inhabitants.

The first quarter of the 17th century was a period of experimentation and improvisation as the settlers struggled to gain a foothold in the New World. During the succeeding decades, the colony's evolving militia system was refined, reorganized, and continually tested in combat. Forced to defend themselves with little or no outside help, the colonists had developed an effective and well organized militia system that by the 1670s encompassed nearly all able-bodied, adult males.

As threats to the colony diminished, the Virginia militia largely ceased to be an effective combat force. By the early 1770s, the militia's primary function was to maintain public order, and one historian has described local militia musters as something "of a joke" since many men were "untrained, unarmed, and uninterested." The situation changed dramatically in the spring of 1775 with the outbreak of open hostilities between the Americans and British forces. By the summer of 1775, the Virginia Revolutionary government had established a threepart military establishment consisting of regular full-time soldiers, a militia composed of most free white males, and a smaller, elite militia group to be called "minutemen" who were to be given extra training and provided with hunting shirts and leggings. Although some minutemen companies did see combat early on against Governor Dunmore, within a year the special minute companies had been merged back into the regular militia establishment.

By 1777 the Virginia militia's duties consisted mostly of suppressing loyalists, preventing slave uprisings, and serving as a pool of potential recruits for the Continental Army. Evidence of militia activity is scarce and usually fragmentary, but one way to learn what militiamen actually did during the Revolution is to study their applications for pensions, submitted decades after the war. Because the records from Amherst County, Virginia, are relatively complete, they provide a good example of what kinds of duties a typical militiaman might perform. Amherst militiamen played a variety of roles during the years 1775-1782, some being called up for as many as four or five tours, which usually lasted about three months each. Many Amherst men served as guards at the barracks near Charlottesville where the British soldiers taken prisoner at Saratoga were being held. Others were called out to fight Indians on the frontier or to relieve state forces at nearby garrisons. Some tours involved nothing more glamorous than gathering provisions or driving herds of cattle.

Most Amherst militiamen saw little real action until 1780 when they were called on to provide men to fight in the Carolinas. One ill-fated company was at the Battle of Camden in August when the men broke and ran away along with the rest of the Virginia and North Carolinia militia. Another company of Amherst militiamen was ordered south in March 1781 to support General Nathanael Greene, but arrived too late to take part in the Battle of Guilford Court House.

When Virginia was invaded beginning in January 1781, the Amherst militia was called out numerous times as the British seemed to march at will throughout large areas of the eastern and central regions of the state. A number of Amherst County men reported having served under the Marquis de Lafayette in the summer of that year, and some fought in the Battle of Green Spring against Lord Cornwallis. As Generals Washington and Rochambeau arrived in Virginia in September to begin the siege of Yorktown, Amherst militiamen, along with those from many other counties, were called up to support the regular army. Many of the elderly men who applied for pensions beginning in the 1820s proudly proclaimed that they were present at the "surrender of Lord Cornwallis."

By the end of the Revolution, some Continental Army officers had learned what the militia could - and could not - reasonably be expected to do. Although the militia was seldom able to stand up alone to British regulars, it nevertheless made a number of important, even vital, contributions to winning independence.

By Edward Ayres, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Historian

Listen to an audio interview with Edward Ayres and Steve Clark of WCVE
Ideas Station about the Virginia Militia in the Revolutionary War.

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Militia in the Revolutionary War, Yorktown Victory Center

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If I was called upon to declare upon Oath, whether the Militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole; I should subscribe to the latter. - George Washington, September 1776 Even before the struggle for American independence ended, two contrasting views of the role of the Revolutionary militia had emerged.

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What are individuals doing to help the war?
What are groups of citizens doing?

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Declaration of Independence

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When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue. In mid-June 1776, a five-man committee including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin was tasked with drafting a formal statement of the colonies' intentions. The Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence-written largely by Jefferson-in Philadelphia on July 4, a date now celebrated as the birth of American independence.

Before the Declaration of Independence

Even after the initial battles in the Revolutionary War broke out, few colonists desired complete independence from Great Britain, and those who did-like John Adams- were considered radical. Things changed over the course of the next year, however, as Britain attempted to crush the rebels with all the force of its great army. In his message to Parliament in October 1775, King George III railed against the rebellious colonies and ordered the enlargement of the royal army and navy. News of his words reached America in January 1776, strengthening the radicals' cause and leading many conservatives to abandon their hopes of reconciliation. That same month, the recent British immigrant Thomas Paine published "Common Sense," in which he argued that independence was a "natural right" and the only possible course for the colonies; the pamphlet sold more than 150,000 copies in its first few weeks in publication.

Did you know? Most Americans did not know Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence until the 1790s; before that, the document was seen as a collective effort by the entire Continental Congress.

In March 1776, North Carolina's revolutionary convention became the first to vote in favor of independence; seven other colonies had followed suit by mid-May. On June 7, the Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee introduced a motion calling for the colonies' independence before the Continental Congress when it met at the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in Philadelphia. Amid heated debate, Congress postponed the vote on Lee's resolution and called a recess for several weeks. Before departing, however, the delegates also appointed a five-man committee-including Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, John Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania and Robert R. Livingston of New York-to draft a formal statement justifying the break with Great Britain. That document would become known as the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson Drafts the Declaration of the Indpendence

Jefferson had earned a reputation as an eloquent voice for the patriotic cause after his 1774 publication of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America," and he was given the task of producing a draft of what would become the Declaration of Independence. As he wrote in 1823, the other members of the committee "unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught [sic]. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams requesting their corrections....I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered to the Congress."

As Jefferson drafted it, the Declaration of Independence was divided into five sections, including an introduction, a preamble, a body (divided into two sections) and a conclusion. In general terms, the introduction effectively stated that seeking independence from Britain had become "necessary" for the colonies. While the body of the document outlined a list of grievances against the British crown, the preamble includes its most famous passage: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The Vote for Independence

The Continental Congress reconvened on July 1, and the following day 12 of the 13 colonies adopted Lee's resolution for independence. The process of consideration and revision of Jefferson's declaration (including Adams' and Franklin's corrections) continued on July 3 and into the late morning of July 4, during which Congress deleted and revised some one-fifth of its text. The delegates made no changes to that key preamble, however, and the basic document remained Jefferson's words. Congress officially adopted the Declaration of Independence later on the Fourth of July (though most historians now accept that the document was not signed until August 2).

As the first formal statement by a nation's people asserting their right to choose their own government, the Declaration of Independence became a significant landmark in the history of democracy. In addition to its importance in the fate of the fledgling American nation, it also exerted a tremendous influence outside the United States, most memorably in France during the French Revolution. Together with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence can be counted as one of the three essential founding documents of the United States government.

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When armed conflict between bands of American colonists and British soldiers began in April 1775, the Americans were ostensibly fighting only for their rights as subjects of the British crown. By the following summer, with the Revolutionary War in full swing, the movement for independence from Britain had grown, and delegates of the Continental Congress were faced with a vote on the issue.

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Read through, Pay close attention to the pictures, text, and what they tell you about the Revolutionary War.

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Washington's Legacy Video - George Washington - HISTORY.com

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As a brilliant military commander and visionary president, George Washington played a vital role in shaping the new nation during and after the American Revolution.

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Read through the articles and watch the videos provided as resources to help you answer the magnetic question.  Your goal is to read and watch all or as many of the resources as you can. As you are investigating record any notes, ideas, or facts that you feel help to answer the magnetic question.

Part 2:

Discuss with your group the notes you took and what you feel answers the magnetic question.