Minutemen

Minutemen were members of the organized New England colonial militia companies trained in weaponry, tactics, and military strategies during the American Revolutionary War.

[1] Minutemen provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that enabled the colonies to respond immediately to military threats.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, all able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60 were required to participate in their local militia company.

[4] As early as 1645 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, some men were selected from the general ranks of "town-based training band" to be ready for rapid deployment.

[5] Some towns in Massachusetts had a long history of designating a portion of their militia as minutemen, with "minute companies" constituting special units within the militia system whose members underwent additional training and held themselves ready to respond at a minute's notice to emergencies, which gave rise to their name as Minutemen.

Officers were elected by popular vote, as in the rest of the militia, and each unit drafted a formal written covenant to be signed upon enlistment.

[6] In response to these tensions, the Massachusetts Provincial legislators found that the colony's militia resources were short just before the American Revolutionary War, on October 26, 1774, after observing the British military buildup.

They found that, "including the sick and absent, it amounted to about 17,000 men, far short of the number wanted, that the council recommended an immediate application to the New England governments to make up the deficiency", resolving to re-organize and increase the size of the militia:[7] The Massachusetts General Assembly was stymied by Governor Hutchinson from passing a bill.

As a result, resisting legislators, including Samuel Adams being among the leaders, set up Committees of Correspondence in parallel with their fellow Patriots in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island that recommended that the militia increase in size and reorganize and form special companies of minutemen, who should be equipped and prepared to march at the shortest notice.

[8] These minutemen were to comprise one-quarter of the whole militia, to be enlisted under the direction of the field-officers, and divide into companies, consisting of at least 50 men each.

[11] In August 1636, the first offensive military attack by militias failed when Massachusetts dispatched John Endecott with four companies on an unsuccessful campaign against the Pequot Indians.

In response to the success of the Wampanoags, in the spring of 1676 an alarm system of riders and signals was formed in which each town was required to participate.

With a rising number of Minutemen they faced another problem: a lack of gunpowder to support an army for long enough to fight a prolonged campaign against the British.

In May 1774, Hutchinson was relieved by General Thomas Gage, the new Governor of Massachusetts, who arrived with orders to close the port of Boston.

[13] This brought many more citizens to Samuel Adams's side, and he pressed the Committees of Correspondence to hold County Conventions to revamp the militia.

This was the first time that the militia was used by the people to block the king's representatives from acting on royal orders and against popular opinion.

It is a myth that the British and other professional armies of the 1700s did not practice marksmanship with their muskets; the military ammunition of the time was made for fast reloading and more than a dozen consecutive shots without cleaning.

The royal authorities inadvertently gave the new Minuteman mobilization plans validation by several "show the flag" demonstrations by General Gage through 1774.

The British were rapidly outnumbered at Concord, with the arrival of the slower moving militia; they had not counted on a long fight, and so had not brought additional ammunition beyond the standard issue in the soldiers' cartridge boxes.

[18] The Continental Army regulars received European-style military training later in the American Revolutionary War, but the militias did not get much of this.

This was one of the reasons that his company was in the lead of Colonel Barrett's Middlesex Minutemen regiment as the Rebels marched down to face the regulars at the Old North Bridge at the Battle of Concord.

In addition, many British commanders learned from experience and effectively modified their light infantry tactics and battle dress to suit conditions in North America.

With this rapid mustering of forces, the militia proved its value by augmenting the Continental Army on a temporary basis, occasionally leading to instances of numerical superiority.

Cowpens is notable in that Daniel Morgan used the militia's strengths and weaknesses skilfully to attain the double-envelopment of Tarleton's forces.

Brown quotes Continental Army soldier Benjamin Thompson, who expressed the "common sentiment" at the time, which was that minutemen were notoriously poor marksmen with rifles: "Instead of being the best marksmen in the world and picking off every Regular that was to be seen, the continual firing which they kept up by the week and the month has had no other effect than to waste their ammunition and convince the King's troops that they are really not really so formidable.

[24] In commemoration of the centenary of the first engagement of the American Revolution, Daniel Chester French, in his first major commission, produced one of his best-known statues (along with the Lincoln Memorial), The Minute Man.

Inscribed on the pedestal is the opening stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 "Concord Hymn" with the words, "Shot heard 'round the world".

The U.S. Air Force named the LGM-30 Intercontinental Ballistic Missile the "Minuteman", which was designed for rapid deployment in the event of a nuclear attack.

The U.S. Navy VR-55 Fleet Logistic Support Squadron is named "Minutemen" to highlight the rapid deployment and mobility nature of their mission.

[27] Sinclair Lewis portrays Minute Men as paramilitary forces of Buzz Windrip's despotic government in his 1935 book It Can't Happen Here.