From Militia To Regular Army

Before the American War of Independence, militia was the major military system. During the first half of the 19th century, army professionalization developed rapidly. After a long and tortuous struggle, they turned the system based on militia into the one on professional army. The thesis makes a deep analysis to the process of system reform and the development of professionalization thinking, guided by the historical materialism, taking advantage of the study methods and results of sociology, politics and military science with the analysis methods of philosophy.During the Colonial Period, people in North America were eager to establish their own force to survive from the unpredicted danger and adverse circumstances. However, they were so poor then that it was impossible for them to build up a professional army. Therefore, influenced by British traditional military system, they set up the militia system.During the American War of Independence, a decision was made by the continental congress to develop their own force—Continental Army, aiming to fight against the British regular army. The Continental Army consisted of voluntary militiaman. To be exact, it could not be called a regular army because they didn't know the command system, manning quotas, combat effectiveness, as well as military strategy and tactics. Just as Washington said"It is a disorderly crowd."It became a real regular army after a series of reorganization and reform by Washington. Since then, militia and regular army co-existed in U.S.A. Which was more important could not be decided even though those of wisdom had realized that a professional army was the foundation of national security and development. The military system transform was carried out with the compromise between them. However, doubtless to say, both of them had made great contribution to the victory of the War of Independence.Just after the establishment of the United States, those with wisdom such as Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, made a careful summary to the War of Independence. Combining with the policy of large-scale territorial expansion, they put forward some ideas on the construction of regular army, whose best parts were adopted later by the Federal Constitution. A two-level system was established legally with the regular army as the mainstay and militia as the base. By 1812, a large-scale expandable regular army had been built up, whose status got improved after the reorganization by Scott.From 1930s to the Civil War, traditional militia weakened while the regular army strengthened due to the prosperous economy without external threat, especially the victory over Mexico strengthened their conviction to establish an expandable regular army. Soldiers started to regard military as a profession with technique. Since then, the U.S. army has been on the way of professionalization. During this period, Danis.Hatt.Mahan and Henry Hurlock combined the advanced military theory and system in Europe with the U.S military system construction, and started the study on the professionalization of army, which contributed to the unprecedented prosperity of military ideology. Since then, the professionalization ideology has been constructed.Under the guidance of the theory, the construction of army professionalization went smoothly. Professional army has become the core force of American defense capability. Moreover, great achievements have been reached in coast defense engineering, navy, building up national defense, military education, as well as the study on arms manufacturing.The establishment of the system changed the militia-centered situation, got rid of the barrier that stopped United States from expansion and hegemony. It also reasonably balanced the political democracy and army construction. Meanwhile, the system provides armies in other nations with the way of development.