MADISON'S MILITIA

A study of the tangled origins of the Second Amendment.

This book’s central thesis—that the Second Amendment was essentially an instrument to authorize militias to suppress slave revolts—might have been novel a few years ago, but it is now well in circulation thanks to Carol Anderson’s The Second and other books and journal articles. Bogus’ primary contribution is in his dissection of the relationship of the amendment to the fierce foundational arguments over federalism versus states’ rights. Here John Madison, the intellectual powerhouse behind the Constitution, enters the picture. In contention against George Mason and Patrick Henry, he reversed his earlier opposition to the amendment in order to get his package passed: “Madison wrote the Amendment to assure his constituents in Virginia, and the South generally, that Congress could not deprive states of armed militia.” Madison realized early on that, left to their own devices, his opponents would form a Southern confederacy and never join the Union. Even if the Supreme Court has decided that the Second Amendment authorizes Americans to own as many guns as they wish, the original intention really was to authorize a homegrown guard, albeit of nefarious intent. Bogus also offers a gimlet-eyed assessment of the difference between a standing army and a militia, with most veterans of the Revolutionary War settled on the value of a trained professional fighting force over a generally undisciplined citizen group that was inclined to run at the first sign of trouble. Arguing as if before a jury, Bogus also notes that whereas the right of the states to regulate militias has generally gone uncontested, the federal government did disarm reconstituted Confederate military units that worked after the Civil War to “intimidate and control emancipated slaves.”

A welcome study of what is surely the most controversial entry in the Bill of Rights.