MINUTE MENBy Nick Wilson

FACT ONE Minutemen were members of teams of

select men from the American colonial partisan militia during the American Revolutionary War.

They provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that allowed the colonies to respond immediately to war threats, hence the name.

FACT TWO: THE HISTORY In the British colony of Massachusetts Bay

, all able-bodied men between the ages of 16 and 60 were required to participate in their local militia.[

As early as 1645 in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, some men were selected from the general ranks of town-based "training bands" to be ready for rapid deployment. Men so selected were designated as minutemen. They were usually drawn from settlers of each town, and so it was very common for them to be fighting alongside relatives and friends.

FACT THREE They recommended to the militia to form

themselves into companies of minute-men, who should be equipped and prepared to march at the shortest notice. These minute-men were to comprise one-quarter of the whole militia, to be enlisted under the direction of the field-officers, and divide into companies, consisting of at least 50 men each.

Members of the minutemen were no more than 30 years old, and were chosen for their enthusiasm, political reliability, and strength. They were the first armed militia to arrive at or await a battle. Officers, as in the rest of the militia, were elected by popular vote, and each unit drafted a formal written covenant to be signed upon enlistment.

FACT FOUR The Minutemen always kept in touch with the

political situation in Boston and their own towns. From 1629 to 1683, the towns had controlled themselves but in 1689, the King appointed governors. By 1772, James Otis and Samuel Adams used the Town Meetings to start a Committee of Correspondence. This instigated in 1774 a boycott of British goods.

The Minutemen were aware of this as well. With a rising number of Minutemen they faced another problem: they didn’t have enough gun powder to support an army for long enough to win freedom. They needed powder badly.

FACT FIVE Most Colonial militia units were provided neither

arms nor uniforms, and were required to equip themselves.

Many simply wore their own farmers' or workmen' clothes, and in some cases they wore cloth hunting frocks. Most used fowling pieces, though rifles were sometimes used where available. Neither fowling pieces nor rifles had bayonets. Some colonies purchased muskets, cartridge boxes, and bayonets from England, and maintained armories within the colony.

FACT SIX The Continental Army regulars received European-

style military training later in the American Revolutionary War, but the militias did not get much of this. Rather than fight formal battles in the traditional dense lines and columns, they were better when used as irregulars, primarily as skirmishers and sharpshooters.

At the end of the American Revolutionary War there were repeated pleas to the British monarchy for intervention with Parliament, any chance of a compromise ended when the Congress were declared traitors by royal decree, and they responded with a declared independence forming a new sovereign nation external to the British Empire, the United States of America, on July 4, 1776.Thats why they call July 4 INDEPENDENCE DAY. And that’s……………

THE END.