Militia

Paramilitary organizations composed of and led by civilians. Prior to the American Revolution, the British North American colonies relied heavily on militias for defense during times of conflict. Colonial militias protected settlers from hostile Native Americans and served alongside British forces during wars with French troops in North America. During the Revolutionary War, militias formed a significant part of the rebel force because the individual colonies refused to give General George Washington the authority to draft troops for the continental army.

The nation's founders, concerned that a permanent standing army represented a threat to civil liberties, largely disbanded the continental army after the war. As a result, state militia remained extremely important as the only ready means of defense. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, state militias took the lead combat role for both armies. They were joined by many volunteer units, typically organized at the local level. Only later in the war did each side resort to a draft to fill the ranks of their armies.

Several factors led to a waning of the importance of state militias after the Civil War. The modern technological warfare pioneered in that conflict required more training and discipline, more advanced weaponry, and far greater numbers of troops than could be supplied by a group of small militias. In addition, the established states were no longer threatened by hostile Native Americans. By the 1880s, most American Indians had given up their resistance to U.S. expansion and settled on reservations. Finally, by the late 18th century, the United States had eliminated all its serious military rivals on the continent and had little need of standing forces of any type.

In 1903, the U.S. Congress passed a law that united all state militias into the U.S. National Guard. Like the militias from which they sprung, separate guard units are organized for each state and placed under the control of the state's governor. In addition, under current U.S. code, all male citizens aged 17 to 45 are considered part of the militia and can be called to service in times of national emergency.

Most of the militias in the United States today are tied to white supremacist or survivalist groups, many of whom are also considered hate groups. These groups grew to prominence in the late 1980s and 1990s. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks extremist groups, there were 858 active militia groups in the country in 1996, but by 2004, only about 143 groups remained active. In the mid- and late 1990s, several militia leaders were convicted of plotting to bomb government buildings and assassinate officials. The most infamous of these incidents was the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The defendants in that case, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were members of a group called the Michigan Militia.

Another factor in the decline of militias was a loss of credibility among the groups' rural midwestern and northwestern power bases. After years of dire predictions, ranging from the imposition of martial law to the United Nations taking over the U.S. government, many adherents of the far right who had been stockpiling food and munitions became disenchanted that the predicted Armageddon never materialized.

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