On September 16, 1565, in the newly established Spanish town of St. Augustine, militia were assigned to guard the expedition's supplies while their leader, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, took the regular troops north to attack the French settlement at Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River.

In return for the increased federal funding which the act made available, militia units were subject to inspection by Regular Army officers, and had to meet certain standards.

[14] Governors may call up the National Guard for active duty to help respond to domestic emergencies and disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, and earthquakes.

As originally drafted, the Constitution recognized the existing state militias, and gave them vital roles to fill: "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasion."

In 1950, with the outbreak of the Korean War and at the urging of the National Guard, Congress reauthorized the separate state military forces for a time period of two years.

Like the soldiers and airmen in the National Guard of the United States, members of the Naval Militia are authorized federal appointments or enlistments at the discretion of the Secretary of the Navy.10 U.S.C. § 7852.

To receive federal funding and equipment, a state naval militia must be composed of at least 95% of Navy, Coast Guard, or Marine Corps Reservists.

It is also the authority under which governors deploy National Guard forces in response to human-made emergencies such as riots and civil unrest, or terrorist attacks.

[40][41] Under this act, white males between the ages of 16 and 60 were obligated to possess arms and to take part in the defense of their communities by serving in nightly guard details and participating in weekly drills.

The Battalion, later the 7th Regiment, was prominent in the line of march on the occasion of Lafayette's final passage through New York en route home to France.

Taking note of the troops named for his old command, Lafayette alighted from his carriage, walked down the line, clasping each officer by the hand as he passed.

On July 14, 1877, workers on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) began to stop trains in Martinsburg, West Virginia in response to wage cuts.

West Virginia governor Henry M. Mathews was the first state commander-in-chief to send in troops to break-up the protests, and this action has been viewed in retrospect as an incident that would transform the National Guard.

Businessmen and business associations donated monies for the construction of armories and to supplement funds of the local National Guard units.

This resulted in constitutional debates within the U.S. government surrounding the legality of the use of the National Guard overseas, culminating in 1912 when U.S. Attorney General George W. Wickersham declared the 1908 amendment to be unconstitutional.

They have also participated in U.S. peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Haiti, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bosnia, and Kosovo and for natural disasters, strikes, riots and security for the Olympic Games when they have been in the States.

Within hours of the devastating San Francisco earthquake and fire of April 1906, the California National Guard maintained order, protected lives and property and distributed relief supplies.

[56][57] The New York National Guard were ordered by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller to respond to the Rochester 1964 race riot in July of that year.

The Battalion's C Battery lost nine men killed and thirty-two wounded when North Vietnamese troops overran Fire Base Tomahawk on June 19, 1969.

In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled against the governor of Minnesota, who had sued over the deployment of the state's National Guard units to Central America.

[66][67] During the 1993 Waco siege of the Branch Davidians, elements of the Alabama and Texas Army National Guard were called in to assist the ATF and the follow on effort by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the National Guard's involvement was limited to several specific areas; surveillance and reconnaissance, transport, maintenance and repairs, training and instruction, helicopters, unarmed tactical ground vehicles.

ATF also received several surplus helmets, flack vests, canteens, first aid dressings, empty magazines, and some night-vision equipment, in addition to MREs and diesel fuel.

[note 1] National Guard units played a major role in providing security and assisting recovery efforts in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Today, ADTs bring "an effective platform for enhanced dialogue, building confidence, sharing interests, and increasing cooperation amongst the disparate peoples and tribes of Afghanistan.

These teams have been essential to the counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan as a public diplomacy tool to build relations with the local people in the tribes and provinces of the country.

The National Guard ADTs also introduce their U.S. civilian colleagues to the Afghan University personnel, which further strengthens relations and trust in the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said that the U.S. will enhance agricultural development instead of big reconstruction projects to build Afghanistan's economy, to have an immediate impact on the Afghan people.

There are also projects that teach bee keeping and livestock production: all of which will have a positive impact on unemployment, hunger, and the ability to sustain future generations.

[83] The act was eventually passed, but instead, the president's authority was expanded to mobilize the reserve components for domestic operations without the consent of the governor, only during a natural disaster, terrorist attack, epidemic or other public health emergency.

[note 2] The "number of guardsmen" is a statistic generated by the Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC), an agency of the DoD tasked with tracking the identities of all persons in the active military, its reserves, and civilians employed by it.