An Appeal to Heaven
The American Militia – The Minuteman
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An Appeal to Heaven
The American Militia – The Minuteman
“And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, there they have a liberty to appeal to heaven whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment.”
- Two Treatises of Government, Chapter III – Of the State of War (§19), John Locke, 1689
The doctrine of an “appeal to heaven” rests on a defined legal tradition, not sentiment. In the Anglo order inherited by the colonies, rights were understood as antecedent to government, secured through custom, precedent, and compact. The foundation is visible in Magna Carta, which binds the ruler to law, declaring in clause 39 that no free man is to be imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled, or ruined except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. It is reaffirmed in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which declares that suspending laws without consent is illegal and affirms that “the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law.”
Locke’s formulation is exact. Where there is “no judge on earth,” the appeal lies to God, where the people are “under the exercise of a power without right,” and deprived of remedy, they may “appeal to heaven,” as set forth in the Second Treatise of Government, Book II, sections 19 and 168. This marks a legal transition. While courts and assemblies function, disputes remain juridical. When those avenues are closed or corrupted, the controversy exits civil adjudication and becomes a question of force and ultimate judgment through the only means left. The appeal is therefore a lawful escalation grounded in natural law, not a metaphor. It is the final recourse of a people whose rights have been denied.
One of many instances of the effect of this, though the first by which the Law recording it as above, the American colonies made this reasoning operative. Colonial charters were treated as binding compacts. The Massachusetts Charter of 1691 and similar instruments defined political authority in contractual terms. When imperial policy conflicted with these expectations, colonial writers responded in legal language. James Otis Jr., in his 1761 speech against the writs of assistance, grounded resistance in higher law and argued that general writs placed the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer. Samuel Adams, in The Rights of the Colonists, framed rights as natural and inalienable, antecedent to all government, and included among those rights the right to support and defend life, liberty, and property in the best manner they could.
This legal reasoning was reinforced by structure. The militia system, later described in the Virginia Declaration of Rights as “the proper, natural, and safe defence of a free State,” was not auxiliary. It was the organized body of the people. Arms-bearing was not an abstract liberty but a civic obligation tied to property, duty, and participation.
There were, however, narrow and revealing exceptions. Certain religious groups, most notably the Society of Friends, refused military service on doctrinal grounds. Colonial governments did not treat this as a simple exemption. Instead, they imposed commutation. In Pennsylvania, for example, Quakers who refused militia duty were assessed fines or required to pay a substitute tax in lieu of service, with goods subject to seizure upon refusal (see the provincial statutes in The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania (Volume 5, 1755 Militia Act, § VIII–XII p. 201–203, 203-205; Volume 6, 1757-60, p. 420-430), militia provisions of the mid-eighteenth century). This distinction matters. The obligation was not removed. It was converted. The state still asserted that defense was owed. The dissenter merely satisfied that obligation in money rather than arms. Even in exception, the principle held: the defense of the community was not optional.
The English Bill of Rights had already codified a right to arms within conditions. In the colonies, this widened into a general expectation of readiness.
