During last week’s celebration of the United States’ 249th birthday, John Dwyer wants everyone to know how important state militias were to our winning independence from Great Britian.
He especially hopes everyone will realize the critical contributions of the more than 6,000 New Jerseyans who stood ready to serve in the New Jersey militia during the American Revolution.
“Remember,” Dwyer told an audience at the Hunterdon County Library on July 9 while dressed in full continental militia regalia, “ it was a militia unit that started the American Revolution.”
Dwyer was referring to a company of farmers and tradesmen who comprised a militia unit in Lexington, Massachusetts.
On the morning of April 19, 1775, this militia stood face-to-face against a battalion of trained professional British soldiers who had come to this small hamlet northwest of Boston to confiscate weapons and supplies collected by the colonial rebels.
After a tense standoff, someone fired a musket – no one knows for sure who it was – and the battle was on. In the ensuing firefight the colonists did not fare well. But the battle ignited the American Revolution.
“Only three weeks later,” Dwyer told his audience, “New Jersey was one of the first colonies to put out a call to raise a militia.
The New Jersey Provincial Congress urged officers to be named and for these officers to “drum up companies consisting of 60 men who are to be exercised twice a week and be ready in a minutes [sic] warning to march in defense of liberty of our country.”
An “insufficient” response compelled the provincial Congress to call for conscription three months later.
“All able bodied men from 16 to 50 are to be enrolled in the militia unless religion forbid it,” the Congress’ proclamation read. “Penalties are to be strictly enforced. Militia will serve one month terms with fines given if a man not turn out. All militia men will furnish themselves with a musket or firelock and bayonet, sword or tomahawk.”
A militia man would be required to forfeit two shillings – about a week’s pay for most tradesmen then – if they did not have their own musket or firelock.
During his talk, Dwyer brought to life details of the everyday existence of someone serving in the New Jersey militia – what they wore, what they ate, what they carried when they marched, how they slept and how they fought.
“Kids are not taught any of this,” Dwyer lamented.
As with other colonial militias, the New Jersey militia fought separately from the Continental Army commanded by George Washington.
“For the next eight years,” Dwyer told the group, “the New Jersey militia would fight the British, the Hessians, Tories (British loyalists), and Indians in defense of liberty. The jack-of-all-trades militiamen raided supply columns, spied on enemy camps, arrested British sympathizers, manned an early warning system of fire towers and often fought alongside the continental army.”
Since many militiamen were hunters, they were well versed in the use of the musket and were expert marksmen.
Since militia men were not trained to fight against an organized army, they were deployed on the flanks as sharpshooters when they fought with the continental army. Their specific task was to cut down British officers, sergeants and drummer boys to disrupt the British chain of command and communication system.
But the militia men took an extra risk in the war. The British Army did not recognize a militia as a professional army, so, if a militia man was caught, he was not afforded the treatment of a professional soldier by the British. Instead, he was summarily hanged as an assassin.
Dwyer said one of the high points of the New Jersey militia’s resistance to the British took place on December 22, 1774, when a group of New Jerseyans enacted their own version of the Boston Tea Party in Greenwich, Cumberland County.
At this little-remembered “tea party,” the New Jerseyans broke into the home of a British loyalist who was hiding crates of tea as a favor to loyalist merchants. The Jersey rebels brought the crates of tea to the town square and burned it all.
A monument in downtown Greenwich commemorates the event.
The “tea burners” included a future governor of New Jersey (James Howell) a future member of the U.S, House of Representatives (Ebenezer Elmer) and a future mayor of Trenton (Jame Erwin).
Dwyer is a military historian who served an aggregate 37 years in the U.S. Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard. His family has a tradition of military service dating back to the American Revolution.
He worked for the National Park Service at Washington’s Headquarters and at Jockey Hollow during his college days and it was the programs he would present to visitors there that started him on his current journey. He is a Jersey native who lives in Clinton with his wife of 50 years.
