Militia Acts

Militia Acts. From 1792 through 1916, Congress struggled to devise a policy to make the state citizen soldiery an effective reserve to augment the U.S. Army in national emergencies and yet preserve the militia's prerogatives as guaranteed in the Constitution. The Militia Act of 1792 left the militia, all able‐bodied men between eighteen and forty‐five, wholly under the control of the states. Although Congress approved a law in 1808 providing $200,000 worth of weapons to be shared among the states, and doubled the amount in 1887, the act left the nation with no reserve and dependent on untrained wartime volunteers.

The Militia Act of 1903, as amended in 1906 and 1908, increased federal aid to $4 million annually and recognized the National Guard as the “Organized Militia.” The amended 1903 act deemed state units the first reserve to be called in any war. It limited federal control, however, and in the National Defense Act of 1916, Congress gave the army extensive control over National Guard officers and units, made state forces available for service overseas, and greatly increased financial support. As amended in 1920, provisions of the 1916 law essentially have governed federal‐state military relations to the present.
[See also Citizen‐Soldier; Militia and National Guard.]

Bibliography

Richard H. Kohn, ed., Military Laws of the United States from the Civil War Through the War Powers Act of 1973, 1979.
John K. Mahon , History of the Militia and the National Guard, 1983.

Jerry Cooper