“Well Regulated”: What did the Framers Mean?

What did the Framers mean by “well regulated”?

It was a militia structure that was organized according to this statutory pattern. And if you go look at those statutes, very often the title is, “An Act to Regulate the Militia of such and such”, “An Act to Amend an Act to Regulate the Militia of such and such”. That term “regulation” was constantly used to refer to these statutory structures. Regulation was shown by what appeared in the statute. And that’s why the structure today would depend upon having within each state, a statutory organization of that state’s militia. These are state institutions, they have to be well regulated, the pattern of regulation comes from a statutory structure, and that’s the responsibility, initially, of each state legislature.

• Congress’s Role with respect to the militia

  Congress’s role then, is to take a look at what’s out there and organize, arm and discipline in order to create a uniform pattern. So if the State of Montana had a militia that was armed with caliber 5.56 rifles and the State of Iowa was armed with caliber .260 Remington Rifle, you would have a disparity there. So Congress might come along and say, “We want the militia of every state armed with a certain caliber of rifle, so we can have interchangeability of ammunition with the armed forces.” Even better would be to say, “That the militia of the several States  be armed with rifles of different  caliber than the armed forces.” This way the armed forces couldn’t use the militia ammunition because one is a check and balance on the other. So if your really working this system through, you would give the militia sufficient disparity from the armed forces, so there would be a clear distinction there. And that would be Congress’s function.

• Setting up a Constitutional Militia requires 2 Government Functions

  1st Function – is the function of the States to set up the militia structure.

  2nd Function – is Congress comes along and looks at the structures that are there and says “We have to make a few amendments here for the purposes of uniformity.”

• Case History: Colonial Rhode Island ‘Private Militia’ Structures known as ‘Independent Companies’

  A very interesting situation occurred in Colonial Rhode Island. They had what were essentially, “Private Militia’s” set up, and they were called “Independent Companies.” And so I and a couple of my friends could agree to set up an “Independent Company.” And we would have so many people in it – 50-60 or whatever the number was – and we would agree to train on a regular basis. And we would agree to have the arms that were required under the state statute, and so forth. And we would conform to all of these principles of the state statute. And then we’d go and take our charter of this “Independent Company” to the General Assembly of Rhode Island, as the General Assembly oversaw such things. And the General Assembly would look at it, and if it fell into the proper form, they would grant us a Charter for this “independent company”, and we would become part of the militia. But we would have selected all of our members, so we would be like a little club, but we’d still be part of that militia authorized by state statute. And then we would train ourselves on our own schedule and we would become subject to militia control only under one of these alarm situations: “Invasion”, “Insurrection”, “Execute the Laws of the Union”. There would be some stipulation in our charter that we would be “Subject to the Regiment of Such and Such”.

  A lot of people in Rhode Island did this. All of these charters went through the General Assembly, so you can see all the charters that were passed. It was quite a popular thing to do because there was a certain amount of social prestige involved in this. These were elite groups, they had fancy uniforms and sometimes were lead by the most prominent citizens. An example of this is Nathanael Greene. Greene ended up as the number two man behind George Washington. He was a Quaker and he joined an independent company called, “The Kentish Guards” in Rhode Island. A very elite operation with fancy uniforms, etc. Greene had problems within the Quaker denomination and they “disfellowshipped” him because he joined this military organization. He was a man with essentially no military background at all. They wanted to give him an Officer rank in the Kentish Guards and Greene declined as he felt he wasn’t qualified and wanted to remain as a private.

  The Kentish Guards were just in time for Lexington and Concord, the siege of Boston. So these Rhode Island troops were being mustered and organized to be sent up to Boston to besiege General Gage. While they were trying to choose who the leader of the Rhode Island Contingent was going to be, they had a Baptist and a Methodist. Now they have these two denominations that are at loggerheads and they figured that the best way to keep peace was to appoint this disfellowshipped Quaker, so they made Nathanael Greene the Commander of the Rhode Island troops. Greene turned out to be very good in the long run. He blossomed in that situation and he developed a lot of military skill. But he started in a little social militia group – The Kentish Guards.

  Everyone of these organizations eventually had to ask for and get the legal imprimatur from the state government because they were state governmental institutions. These were not private clubs, this was not the veterans of foreign wars, or veterans of the French and Indian Wars. These were institutions of the state government and nobody thought that was amiss. Why?

  Because this was a system of representative self government. There was no dichotomy between the government and the people in principle. You may not have liked someone in the General Assembly who was your Representative, particularly if your candidate lost the election. But you didn’t look at the government as somehow antagonistic to you in principle, the government was not your enemy because you were the government. And in the militia structure was not looked at as a threat because it was you and your neighbors who were armed and trained. So there was that principle of local control, even to the point of people forming these “Independent Company’s” as they called them in Rhode Island, because they had that level of independence.

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