That Every Man Be Armed by Halbrook Stephen P
Author:Halbrook, Stephen P. [Halbrook, Stephen P.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2014-05-08T18:41:49+00:00
CHAPTER 5
A few days later, Wilson reported his bill to disband the Southern militias,214 but it was not taken up until the next session. The bill read:
And be it further enacted, That all militia forces now organized or
in service in either of the States of Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and
Texas, be forthwith disarmed and disbanded, and that the further
organization, arming, or calling into service of the said militia
forces, or any part thereof, is hereby prohibited under any circumstances whatever until the same shall be authorized by Congress.215
In response to a request for an explanation of the bill by Senator
Charles R. Buchalew (Democrat of Pennsylvania), Senator Wilson pointed
out that “we have evidence of great wrongs perpetrated” by the “local State
militia” in those states.216 Buchalew responded: “The organization of local
forces for the preservation of order and for defense is one of those ordinary
and common rights and privileges, which ought not to be curtailed. . . .”217
Senator Henry S. Lane (Republican of Indiana) justified “dissolving these
local militia organizations” because they were not “in harmony with
Government or with the Union sentiment of the country. . . .”218 After
Senator Thomas A. Hendricks (Democrat of Indiana) objected that it would
amount to “repealing a clause of the Constitution,”219 consideration of the
bill was postponed.
When the bill was taken up again a week later, Senator Wilson urged
abolition of the organized militias on the grounds that “in some localities they
have been used to disarm portions of the people. . . .”220 Abolition of the militia was vigorously opposed by Senator Waitman T. Willey (Republican of
West Virginia) on the grounds that “the militia should at least carry arms to a
limited extent. . . . [T]here may be some constitutional objection against
depriving men of the right to bear arms and the total disarming of men in
time of peace.”221 Senator Wilson, a strong supporter of the Fourteenth
Amendment, explained that the militia organizations “go up and down the
country taking arms away from men who own arms, and committing outrages of various kinds. . . .”222 But Willey was still unsatisfied because the bill
takes the right to bear arms away from every citizen of the southern
States. . . . I should be very willing to favor discriminating
Freedmen, Firearms, and the Fourteenth Amendment
153
legislation that would regulate the use of arms by the militia in the
South; but a sweeping enactment of the character that I understand
this to be does not meet my approbation as at present advised.223
It was the argument of Senator Hendricks that the bill would violate the
Second Amendment by disarming not only state militias, but also individuals, that carried the most weight in the fate of the bill:
I am not able to see how the proposition can be adopted by the
Senate, in view of the second article of the Amendments to the
Constitution, which declares, “a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep
and bear arms shall not be infringed.” If this infringes the right of
the people to bear arms we have no authority to adopt it.
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