Citizenship and Compulsory Military Service: The Revolutionary Origins of Conscription in the United States

Abstract

This article seeks to clarify the origins of citizen service in the United States. It departs from the premise that military service compelled by the state and performed as an obligation of citizenship may be understood as constitutive of citizen service. Based on this analytic distinction, the article develops one central argument. Citizen service was first realized in the United States during the American Revolution, but not, as might be expected, in the compulsory militia dating from the colonial period. Rather, citizen service was realized first in the form of the federally mandated conscription of American national citizens into the Continental Army, a peculiarly Revolutionary contribution to the War of Independence. Citizen service's Revolutionary birth in national conscription, then, helps to recast the very roots of the American military tradition.