The Militias- The Power Behind the Revolution Part 5

The Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Why was this right and duty placed into the United States Constitution? It’s rather obvious that the new country of America realized that they owed their independence from the British to the militias that had been set up to fight the Indians and the French, and which had allowed them to settle a disputed frontier. In other words, if there had not been well organized militias in the 1700’s, America never could have wrested its independence from the powerful British Empire. Its ironic that in more recent times, a well organized, local rebel force, is what allowed the Vietnamese to defeat America in Southeast Asia and local rebel forces defeated both the Russians and Americans in Afghanistan. An effective rebel force, could wreak havoc on a rouge government throughout the heartland of America even today, although those Directed Energy Weapons and Blackhawk helicopters of the U.S. government, make a  terrifying prospect for those in rebellion.

     In Windham, militias continued after the Revolution. Based on birth dates and when people moved into Windham, the “Windham Guards” were active during the early 1800’s.

From Morrison’s History of Windham. Theodore Dinsmoor was born in Windham in 1798. “He was square build, compact in bone and muscle…; He could outrun, out jump and outwrestle the whole town…The ease and grace with which he would beat any competitor, took away all sting and mortification from the vanquished and instead of a sullen foe, he became a fast friend, and as proud of the honor of having contended with him in a trialof strength and skill as most boys would have been in coming out victorious…He was a most skillful drummer…That was in the days of the glorious pomp and circumstances of the training and regimental muster of the New Hampshire Militia, before the military spirit kindled by the War of 1812, had died out, and the militia degenerated into that laughing-stock of the world which characterized its condition in most of the Northern States, at the breaking out of the rebellion in 1861.”