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Notes and Documents
Gun Ownership in Early America: A Survey of Manuscript Militia Returns
Robert H. Churchill
| IN 1996, Michael
Bellesiles's Journal of American History article on gun ownership
in early America startled many early American historians. Bellesiles
found that probate inventories and militia records from the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries strongly indicated that guns were
scarce in early America and that gun ownership was "exceptional."
Controversy has since raged over Bellesiles's research, which he
published in more elaborate form in Arming America: The Origins
of a National Gun Culture. Critics have focused primarily on
Bellesiles's use of probate inventories. Yet Bellesiles's research
was innovative in its use of militia returns, documents seldom cited
in the military histories of the period. Bellesiles argues that
available returns provided additional evidence of guns' scarcity.1 |
1 |
| The
term return is a generic military reference to reports of
information requested by superior officers and by the civil officers
of the colony or state. Typical categories of reporting included
results of officer elections, records of provisions consumed, and
weekly reports of men fit for duty. During the period from the onset
of the Revolution to the end of the War of 1812, provincial and
state governments also began to demand accurate reports of the military
readiness of their militias. Such returns, showing the size and
armament of specific military units, are often referred to as strength
or equipment returns. At least four states mandated that militia
officers make annual strength returns of the units under their command
during the Revolutionary War. The Militia Act of 1792 extended this
reporting regime to require annual strength returns from every militia
commander in the nation.2 |
2 |
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These strength returns, offering a
tabulation of men at each rank and the arms and ammunition in their
possession, can yield valuable insights into the prevalence of gun
ownership in early America, but only if used with considerable caution.
Where a significant portion of the militia of a state made returns
of strength and arms, these returns allow us to ask questions about
gun ownership of a much larger population than is covered by existing
surveys of probate inventories. Further, in an era in which the
militia enrolled most free white men, militia returns recorded arms
possession by younger, poorer men, who were often under-represented
in surveys of probate inventories. They thus serve as a useful complement
to probate records. These records also permit comparison of gun
ownership rates across region and across time. Finally, gaps in
record keeping can give us insights into the extent and limits of
the state's power to track and command the persons and property
of its citizens.
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