The Motor Transport Convoy spent their Sunday in Laramie on this day in 1919.
The weather was "fair and cool", which would be a good description of most summer days in high altitude Laramie, which has some of the nicest summer weather in Wyoming. Wind and rain in the late afternoon is a typical feature of the summer weather there.
In New Jersey, where the weather probably wasn't fair and cool, Troop A of the New Jersey State Militia Reserve was training.
Troop A, New Jersey State Militia Reserve, at Denville, New Jersey.
State units during World War One and World War Two are a really confusing topic. All states have the ability to raise state militia units that are separate and part from the National Guard, but not all do. Generally, however, during the Great War and even more during the Second World War, they did.
State units of this type are purely state units, not subject to Federal induction, en masse. Their history is as old as the nation, but they really took a different direction starting in the Spanish American War.
Early on, all of the proto United State's native military power was in militia units. There was no national army, so to speak, in Colonial America. The national army was the English Army, which is to say that at first, prior to the English Civil War, it was the Crown's army. That army was withdrawn from North American during the English Civil War of the 1640s and 1650s, in which it was defeated. During that decade long struggle British North America was defended by local militias. When British forces returned, which they did not in any numbers until the French and Indian War, it was the victorious parliamentary army, famously clad in red coats, which came back.
Not that this was novel. Early on all early British colonies were also defended only by militias. The Crown didn't bother to send over troops to defend colonies, which were by and large private affairs rather than public ones anyhow. At first, individual colonies were actually town sized settlements, with associated farmland, and they had their own militias. Indeed, as late as King Philip's War this was still the case and various towns could and did refuse to help other ones and they had no obligation to do so.
Later, when colonies were organized on a larger basis, the proto states if you will, militia units were organized on that basis, although they were still local units. I.e., towns and regions had militias, but the Governor of the Colony could call any of them out. That gave us the basic structure of today's National Guard, in a very early fashion, and in fact that's why the National Guard claims to be the nation's oldest military body with a founding date of December 13, 1636.
Colonial militia's fought on both sides of the American Revolution, depending in part upon the loyalty of the Colonial governor at the time they were mustered as well as the views of the independent militiamen. They formed, however, the early backbone of the Rebel effort and indeed the war commenced when British troops and militiamen engaged in combat at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775.
The Revolution proved the need for a national army to contest the British Army and hence the Continental Army was formed during the war and did the heavy lifting thereafter. Militia, however, remained vital throughout the war. Following the British surrender, there was no thought at all given to keeping a standing national army and it was demobilized and, for a time, the nation's defenses were entirely dependent upon militias, with any national crisis simply relying upon the unquestioned, at that time, ability of the President to call them into national service if needed.
The lack of a national army soon proved to be a major problem and a small one was formed, but all throughout the 18th and the first half of the 19th Centuries the nation's primary defense was really based on militias, with all males having a militia obligation. The quality of militia units varied very widely, but by and large they rose to the occasion and did well. Interestingly enough, immediately to our north, Canada, a British Colony, also relied principally on militias for defense and its militias notably bested ours during the War of 1812.
The system began to demonstrate some stresses during the Mexican War during which New England's states refused, in varying degrees, to contribute to the nation's war effort against Mexico. A person can look at this in varying ways, of course. While we've taken the position here that the Mexican War was inevitable and inaccurately remembered, the fact that the Federal government had to rely upon state troops did give states an added voice on their whether or not they approved of a war. The New England states did not. The Southern states very much did, which gave the Mexican War in its later stages an oddly southern character.
The swan song of the militia system in its original form came with the Civil War. Huge numbers of state troops were used on both sides, varying from mustered militia units that served for terms, to local units mustered only in time of a local crisis, to state units raised just for the war. But the war was so big that the Federal Army took on a new larger role it had not had before, and with the increase in Western expansion after the war, it was reluctant to give it up. Militia's never again became the predominate combat force of the United States. Indeed, there was long period thereafter where the militia struggled with the Army for its existence, with career Army officers being hugely crabby about it.
That saw state militias become increasingly organized as they fought to retain a military role, and by the Spanish American War they were well on their way to being the modern National Guard. The Dick Act thereafter formalized that. But the Spanish American War, which was also very unpopular in New England, saw some states separate their militias into National Guard and State Guard units, with State Guard units being specifically formed only to be liable for state service. Ironically, some of the State Guard units that were formed in that period had long histories including proud service in the nation's prior wars. This split continued on into World War One which saw some states, such as New Jersey, muster its National Guard for Federal induction but its State Guard just for wartime state service.
That pattern became very common during the Great War during which various states formed State Guard units that were only to serve during the war for state purposes. Naturally, the men who served in them were men who were otherwise ineligible for Federal service for one reason or another, something that has crated a sort of lingering atmosphere over those units. When the war ended a lot of states that had formed them, dropped them, after the National Guard had been reconstituted.
This patter repeated itself in World War Two during which, I believe, every state had a State Guard. After the Second World War very few have retained them, and most of the states that have, have a long history of separated militia units. Today those units tend to provide service for state emergencies, but they also often serve ceremonial functions. An exception exists in the form of the Texas State Guard, which was highly active on the border during the Border War period, and which was retained after World War Two even after the Federal Government terminated funding for State Guard units in 1947. They've continued to be occasionally used in Texas for security roles.
In New Jersey, we'd note, the situation during the Great War was really confusing, as there were militia units organized for the war, as well as separate ones that preexisted it. A lot of those units would soon disappear as the National Guard came back into being, although New Jersey is one of the few states that has always had a State Guard since first forming one.
