Sunday, October 14, 2007

Today's Humility Lesson

I mentioned a couple of days ago my irritation at a claim that there was no Pennsylvania militia until two years into the war. Professor Nathan Kozuskanich has now responded by digging through the records, and finding that the 1757 militia law, after many roundabouts with the governor, was only in effect for a couple of years, so indeed, there would appear not to have been a formal militia law in effect when the Revolution started.

This still doesn't explain why official documents refer to soldiers in 1776 who are members of the "Pennsylvania Militia" and why members of the Associations were treated like militia by the Revolutionary government. It appears that Professor Kozuskanich might be technically correct that there was no militia statute in effect at the time--although functionally, the Associators were operating like militia.

This doesn't solve the problems of his interpretation of the Pennsylvania Constitution's "bear arms" provision (sec. 13) as though it was a part of the religiously scrupulous militia clause (sec. 8).

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