THE rIGHT IS ANTI-ORIGINALIST:

One of many arguments that Henry and Mason deployed in Richmond concerned the militia. Until then, states controlled their militia. But the Constitution gave Congress the power to organize, arm, and discipline the militia. The states were only given the authority to appoint officers and train the militia in accordance with the discipline prescribed by Congress. Time and again, Henry and Mason argued that Congress might "neglect or refuse" to arm the militia, on which the South relied for slave control. "The militia may be here destroyed by that method which has been practiced in other parts of the world before; that is, by rendering them useless - by disarming them," Mason declared. Henry argued that authority to arm the militia implied the authority to disarm it, and he raised the specter of Congress - controlled by a faster-growing, increasingly abolitionist North - doing exactly that.

Southerners lived in terror of slave revolts. In 1739, an insurrection in Stono, South Carolina by 60-100 slaves, armed with stolen muskets, left more than 60 White slaveowners, family members, and militiamen dead. No one knows how large the rebellion might have grown, or what the death toll would have been, if militia had not snuffed out the revolt before the end of its first day. In Eastern Virginia, where many of the Founders lived and the Richmond debate was taking place, enslaved Blacks outnumbered Whites. At night, militia groups patrolled designated areas - called "beats" - to ensure slaves were where they were supposed to be (this is where the terms patrols and policeman's beat originated).

But while militia were essential for slave control, the Revolutionary War had demonstrated they were useless as a military force. Lexington and Concord were the only true militia victories. In the face of the enemy, militia repeatedly threw down their muskets and fled. Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee, a hero of the Revolutionary War, told the Richmond convention that he "could enumerate many instances" of militia unreliability but would describe just one: how Continental soldiers behaved with "gallant intrepidity" and militiamen fled at the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Other Virginians had previously reported much the same. George Washington repeatedly expressed disgust with militia. After Virginia militia bolted without firing a single shot at the Battle of Camden, their own commander told Governor Thomas Jefferson, "[M]ilitia I plainly see won't do." 

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