"A Well-Ordered Militia"

This old photo (2014) of armed occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is circulating again today on social media (and even some legitimate news sites) as a kind of placeholding illustration to represent the private "militias" that claim they are deploying to the southern border in terror of a few thousand desperate and impoverished refugees from Central America. My first reaction was to wonder about an inverse relationship between gun size and anatomy, or perhaps a direct relationship between caliber and IQ. Then I remembered the Second Amendment defense of a "well-ordered militia" and wondered whether this assortment of crackpots would have qualified.

But I am a student of US history. So I quickly realized that, yes, had they had iPhones in the early 19th century, one of the main activities of the militias of the time would, indeed, have been the taking and posting of heroic selfies, probably with explicitly racist hashtags.

I started thinking about the Red Stick War of 1813-1814. The Mississippi militia burned Native farms without engaging them in battle before installing themselves at a fortification they called Fort Mims. When two African American teens told the Mississippi militia's colonel that Red Sticks were in the vicinity, he had them beaten for lying. Then he served several barrels of whiskey to his men, so that they were actually both drunk and outnumbered when the Red Sticks attacked and defeated them. All the African Americans present at Fort Mims then departed with the victorious Red Sticks.

The Tennessee militia, led by Andrew Jackson was plagued by infighting, indiscipline and desertion. It was only the arrival of several hundred Cherokee and Creek allies along with a regiment of US Regulars that allowed Jackson to mount an offensive. And (of course, this is Andrew Jackson we are talking about) he subsequently treated his Creek allies as a defeated force, making them sign a humiliating treaty as if they had been opponents!

Then there is Black Hawk's War of 1832. Black Hawk led a group of Sauk and Fox Natives across the Mississippi River from Iowa to settle on lands in Illinois. When his scouts discovered a large body of Illinois militia, he sent three men to parley with them. Major Isaiah Stillman shot them, then sent his men after the Sauk scouts who were observing from nearby hills. When the militia encountered Black Hawk's main body of fighters, they turned and fled. His defeat sparked a general call-up of militia, but they were plagued by insubordination and desertion and they were finally disbanded. Black Hawk was eventually captured by Regular troops of the US Army, but the militiamen who accompanied them engaged in a wholesale massacre of non-combatant Natives.

Abraham Lincoln was 23 when he enlisted in a company of Illinois militia to fight the Sauk. He was elected Captain, apparently because he was a very good wrestler. He remembered his service in an 1848 speech to Congress saying, "I had a good many bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never fainted from the loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry."

I think sending large bodies of US troops to the border now is a political stunt by a racist President. But they are being sent, nevertheless, and they have to prepare for the conditions there. Among the concerns of planners is the presence of heavily-armed (and poorly-regulated) civilians. In fact, the planning PowerPoint for "Operation Faithful Patriot" refers to "Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments. They operated under the guise of citizen patrols supporting CBP." Here is a copy of that slide.

All of which is another way of saying that racist militias are not a new phenomenon in US history. Neither is their disorganization. It seems not just to be part of the imagined heritage of the American white man, but an essential piece of our actual history, too.