Convicted, Condemned, Commanding

John Fries, a Pennsylvania militia captain sentenced to death as a traitor after freeing tax resisters from federal captivity in 1799, survived his death sentence when President John Adams decided to pardon him. But his treason conviction did have a serious consequence: Fries lost his position as a militia captain. Removing him from that office, the militiamen of Montgomery County instead elected him [added later: in 1800] to the rank of lieutenant colonel. So, you know, militia officers had to be very careful not to commit any capital crimes in the early republic, because it might get them promoted.

Also elected to field grade in Pennsylvania that year: Thomas Cooper, a republican newspaper editor convicted under the sedition act. He became the colonel of the Northampton County militia while still confined in a Philadelphia jail.

The standard history of military force in the early republic has Americans opposed to a professional army and preferring to rely on the militia. But it's difficult to overstate how little the people in political power believed they could rely on the militia -- and not just because they regarded the militia as an ineffective military force. Presidents and governors didn't trust the militia because they couldn't trust the militia. My sentiments are entirely with Fries and Cooper, who were on the right side against a gang of power-hungry High Federalists, but the point is that government officials preferred professional forces precisely because they could separated from the people at large. They could be held to the political will of their leaders in a way that the ordinary men of the militia could not.

See also the January, 1799 address of Georgia Governor James Jackson to the state legislature:"And here I have to remark that lieut. col. Watkins, of the Richmond county regiment, has also made declarations in the public prints, that he will never consider himself bound by certain parts of the constitution. This, as a public officer, is going to great lengths indeed. Will never feel himself bound by certain parts of the constitution, and those parts not specified!"

Despite their many flowery speeches about the glorious militia of the republic, early American political leaders never much wanted to turn their backs on the thing. It was a problem that they never solved, but also a problem they never stopped trying to solve. They did not prefer the militia to professional military forces.