History
Guard members continue the legacy of the “Minutemen” of the American Revolution—citizen-soldiers trained and ready to put their peacetime pursuits on hold when called upon to serve their state or nation. Throughout much of its history, the U.S. has maintained only a small standing army. Instead, it has primarily relied on the militia system for security which, formalized in the Uniform Militia Act of 1792, embraced the principle of universal military obligation for most able-bodied males. Militia members participated in periodic compulsory unit training musters, and were responsible for providing their own weapons.
In 1848, the first session of the Wisconsin Legislature provided for the distribution of federal arms and military equipment. Wisconsin Guard troops fought in the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, both the First and Second World Wars, and the Korean War. Guard members have been activated on numerous other occasions, including for the Berlin Crisis the Persian Gulf War, peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, and current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Read more about this topic: Wisconsin Army National Guard
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)