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Title: Reconsiderations on the Revolutionary War by Don Higginbotham ISBN: 0-8371-9846-1 Publisher: Greenwood Publishing Group Pub. Date: 07 March, 1978 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $55.00

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Rating: 4
Summary: Very good scholarship
Comment: Don Higginbotham has also written extensively on what he calls "the militia myth:" a belief among Americans that only virtuous, armed citizens were needed for its defense, not a standing army along European lines made up of conscripts from the lower orders of society. In several of his works, Higginbotham details the militia's history, social role, and gradually declining effectiveness as a military force by the middle of the 18th century. The American militia leading up to the Revolutionary War, was "an institution that, in its actual operation, was more myth than reality, that never really stood up to professional armies in major combat, and that could scarcely do so in 1775." With regard to combat, Higginbotham writes that the militia, when employed as partisans, "were often effective, far less so when arranged in close rank formation against British regulars with bayonets." In addition to furnishing manpower for Continental regiments, he concludes, the militia "operating on the local scene or behind the lines simply had to problems of law and order, disaffection, and war weariness." Additionally, "the state militias were equally indispensable in the war against the Revolution's internal enemies," particularly in the South. Perhaps Higginbotham's most valuable work on this subject is his own chapter in Reconsiderations on the Revolutionary War, which he edited in 1978. In this essay, he outlines traditional views of the militia by contemporaries and historians, its functions in war, "motivation for service," its officers, and the "all encompassing role" it was asked to play.