Revolutionary War and Memorial Day

There was “badness of weather” in March 1775 when sixteen-year-old Nicholas Gulick mustered in with the New Jersey Militia for the first time. He was a private, two months away from his seventeenth birthday. Every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 50 was expected to serve, and by October of that year, it would be mandatory.  He left for the town of Amboy forty miles from his home where a militia with a crack reputation awaited. Perhaps he enlisted with friends who lived near his farm in Hunterdon County, a group of farm boys shouldering weapons and assuming the responsibility of manhood. Nicholas, like all youngsters of the time, grew up shooting wild game for food. He would have been a good shot and was no doubt a welcomed recruit, regardless of his marching skills.   

If you lived in New Jersey, you were in the crossroads of the revolution. Troop movements, major battles, skirmishes in small towns and across the countryside made New Jersey pivotal in the American Revolution. There were four regiments in New Jersey, and one was led by Nicholas’s father, Captain Henry Gulick. The militia chose their own officers which spoke highly of those selected. Nicholas knew his father left big footsteps for him to follow.

Nicholas was one of nearly 200,000 citizen soldiers who supported the regular army during the Revolutionary War. To the colonists, the British army was a tyrannical threat to civilian government. The militia, besides supporting the Continental Army, acted as local law enforcement. British forces sought to disrupt American communities by instigating slave rebellions and Indian raids. The militia fended off these threats.

Militiamen were to keep powder and bullets in their homes, so when the alarm sounded, they would be ready to assemble immediately at their captain’s residence to march against the enemy. They knew the local landscape and citizens intimately, critical to effectively waging war. They even spied on Loyalists in American communities.

Nicholas had to provide his own weapon, food, clothing, and equipment. The most common firearms were a long rifle or musket with bayonet; knives, axes and tomahawks were also used. He would carry a knapsack with ammunition and flints, a haversack and canteen, but his most important camp equipment was his wool blanket. It would protect him against the cold, and, when he did not have a tent to sleep in, from the moisture in the air. It would serve as an overcoat if he did not have one. 

What was his training like? The effectiveness of militias varied from state to state and year to year. Much of it was done locally, marching on the village green in small groups. Nicholas was a young man by today’s standards but on average, militiamen were older than Continental soldiers and received only perfunctory training; few had experienced combat. The excitement of the early days wore off in the long grind of the eight year war for American independence. Men began to evade service and legally bought substitutes to go in their place.

And what of his service in the war? Fortunately for Nicholas’s descendants there is a verbatim account from his application for a pension in 1842. It is a fascinating look into his war experience, quoted below:

He was at the Battle of Millstone in March 1776 where they “forged the stream, and took 70 loaded wagons and a number of horses” from the British. What must Nicholas have thought, seeing 500 British soldiers poised in their brilliant red coats? He and the outnumbered 400 militia in their homespun wool coats forged undaunted into the icy stream and overwhelmed the British regulars in a pitched battle. Afterward the British refused to acknowledge they were defeated by militia, such was their humiliation. 

In the winter of 1776 Nicholas was at Bethlehem and Alexandria, New Jersey, “ransacking and searching from place to place among the Tories taking from them all their arms and implements of war.” Under his father, Captain Henry Gulick, he was at the “skirmish at Springfield when the meeting house was burned and the minister’s wife was killed; two spies were found guilty and executed.”  He “went out at various times with Captain Henry Gulick serving in the militia in various places and served a total of more than two years in defense of his country in the war of the revolution.”

The first militia was organized in Massachusetts in1636. It expanded through the colonies before the Revolutionary War and grew into today’s National Guard. Like the militia of the past, we call up the National Guard today in times of national disaster or military conflict. This weekend we will celebrate Memorial Day 2020. I’d like to pay tribute to my fourth and fifth great-grandfathers, Nicholas and Henry Gulick and all the citizen soldiers for their essential role in securing America’s independence during the Revolutionary War. The war would not have been won without you. We are in your debt.

Concord Minuteman Monument at Concord Bridge, MA