Militia were never intended for the United States, but for individual
states, to defend their states' rights."
In the twenty years of peace administration, this question of employing
the militia in a foreign war had never arisen. If the National Government
in 1812 had been ready for war, either in force or finance; if the war had
been favoured in the commercial States where the available wealth of the
country was accumulated; or if the administration had not been embarrassed
constantly by lack of soldiers and revenue, the resistance of New England
to the Federal attempts to control her militia, to recruit her young men,
and even to contemplate drafting her able-bodied citizens might never have
arisen. But if the test had not come, the governors of Massachusetts and
Connecticut would not have put themselves on record as resisting the call
of the President for their quota of militia to serve both inside and
outside the State, and the section would have missed committing itself to
the former ground of its opponent. The creation of a "Federal army" out of
the State militia was now criticised as violently in New England as it had
been in the Southern States during the suppression of the whiskey
insurrection a score of years before.
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