politics

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.”

Windham in the Revolution: Part 1

“The Boston Tea Party was a seminal American political and mercantile protest on December 16, 1773…Its ironic that tariffs are on the front pages in America at the same time as the 250 Celebration. The tea party was initiated by Sons of Liberty in Boston in colonial Massachusetts, one of the original Thirteen Colonies in British America, it escalated hostilities between Britain and American Patriots, who opposed British colonial mercantile and governing practices. Less than two years later, on April 19, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, also in Massachusetts, launched the eight-year American Revolutionary War between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, which ultimately prevailed, securing their independence and the establishment of the sovereign United States of America.

The target of the Boston Tea Party was the British implementation of the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the East India Company to sell tea from China in the colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the Townshend Act taxes, which they saw as a violation of their rights as Englishmen to “no taxation without representation.

Disguised as Native Americans the night of December 16, 1773, Sons of Liberty activists boarded the Dartmouth, a British ship that had docked in Boston carrying a major shipment of East India Company tea, and set about throwing 342 chests of the tea into Boston Harbor. The British government considered the protest an act of treason and responded harshly. Nine days later, on December 25, at the Philadelphia Tea Party, American patriots similarly protested the arrival of a British tea shipment, which arrived aboard the British ship Polly. While the Philadelphia patriot activists did not destroy the tea, they sent the ship back to England without unloading it.”

“Parliament responded in 1774 with the Intolerable Acts, or Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, ended local self-government in Massachusetts and closed Boston’s commerce. Colonists throughout the Thirteen Colonies responded to the Intolerable Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them, culminating in the October 1774 Continental Association.”

“In addition to proving one of the most influential events of the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party has proved an enduring historical symbol. In the 21st century, drawing inspiration from the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, the Tea Party movement drew its name from it and has frequently cited the principles associated with it and the broader American Revolution as inspirational and guiding principles.” Wikipedia