Considering a Cadre Augmented Army - RAND Corporation

-281- A Historical Analysis of Cadre
of the militia shall be compelled to serve more than three months in any one year, nor more
than in due rotation with every other able-bodied man of the same rank in the battalion to
which he belongs.” 29 This perpetuated one of the major problems with the militia
experienced during the Revolutionary War. Because the militia needed time after
mobilization to train before they could be ready to fight, short enlistments often meant that
by the time the militia were trained to fight, their enlistments were complete and they would
return home.
A second drawback of the Militia Act was that it allowed the states to appoint
officers. In his proposal for a cadre force Emory Upton emphasized this as a major failure of
the militia system. In his analysis of the Militia Act of 1792, he wrote: “A mere glance at the
military edifice proposed by this law shows that its foundations were built on the sands … It
is not necessary to discuss the military qualifications of the swarm of generals appointed by
the different states … although it was upon these that the General Government would have
to depend in case of actual war.” 30 The major drawback of allowing states to appoint officers
was discipline. States generally allowed units to elect their officers. In order to win a popular
vote of their men, militia officers were often lax with discipline.
The final criticism of the Militia Act was that it left the enforcement of the law up to
the states. There was no penalty for a state not enrolling all able-bodied men, nor was there a
penalty for men not providing their own arms. Kreidberg and Henry best express this: “the
lack of teeth in the act and failure to provide Federal standardization and supervision for it
doomed it to impotence.” 31 The Militia Act would serve as the primary law regulating the
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29 United States Congress (1792)
30 Upton (1904), p. 85
31 Kreidberg and Henry (1955), p. 31