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Republican Liberty & Military Policy

Lawrence Delbert Cress

• Texas A & M University

“Republican Liberty and National Security: American Military Policy as an Ideological Problem, 1783 to 1789.” William and Mary Quarterly 38(January 1981):73–96.

In 1775, American colonists had gone to war, committed to the classical republican notion that only a locally organized militia composed of citizen-soldiers could defend the country and still avoid the aggressive and tyrannical tendencies of a centralized military. Apart from any military prowess they might possess, militiamen were looked upon as an embodiment of public virtue, the armed expression of the citizen's willingness to serve the republic and thus the common good.

However, as the Revolutionary War advanced, the ideal of the militia steadily eroded and the principal responsiblity for national defense passed to any army modeled after the centralized professional forces of Great Britain. Self-interest replaced public virtue as the primary military motivation, as pensions and bounties were used to help keep a skilled disciplined army in the field.

After the victory at Yorktown, Americans debated whether to endorse republican virtue or a strong military defense. Two popular writers of the day personified this split. In her three-volume history of the American Revolution, Mercy Otis Warren expressed a deeply rooted fear of standing armies, whereas David Ramsay argued in his history of the Revolution that the colonies' wartime difficulties resulted from too much republicanism which fostered momentary gallantry rather than disciplined perseverence. Reviewing the Congressional debates over military policy during the 1780s and 1790s, Prof. Cress chronicles the often torturous attempts to devise plans which would reconcile republican with military values.

The Pickering plan, influenced by ideas shared by Mercy Otis Warren, proposed a decentralized militia and entrusted the states with the responsibilities of officering, training, and administration. Under the plan, the inspector general, paid and appointed by the continental government, would act only to insure that the states fulfilled their constitutional obligations. By contrast, the Putnam plan reiterated David Ramsay's appeal for a highly centralized militia structure. Regimental officers would be appointed by state governors but commissioned by Congress; the Confederation government would have the final word concerning the character and composition of the officer corps. Military regiments would be numbered without regard to states and organized in divisions commanded by congressionally appointed major generals who were independent of state control.

These plans along with a compromise proposal offered by von Steuben failed to win solid support in Congress. However, another scheme proposed by Secretary of War Henry Knox seemed to strike the balance the country was searching for. Since republican deliberative government seemed less responsive to military threat than monarchy, Knox urged peacetime preparedness and proposed a standing militia whose ranks would consist primarily of an advanced corps of young men 18 to 20 years of age. Knox saw this service as an important “apprenticeship” in republican virtue for the youth of the nation. In emergencies, a reserve corps of men 21 through 59 years of age would be subject to call. Yearly “Camps of Discipline” for the advanced corps would “mold the minds of the young men to a due obedience of the laws” as well “instruct them in the art of war.” Under Knox's plan, the continental war office would supply arms and uniforms while actual mobilization would be directed and supervised by state officials.

Because of its balance, the Knox proposal received widespread popular and Congressional support. In January, 1790, Washington recommended the plan—revised to reflect the national government's explanded constitutional powers—to Congress as the centerpiece of the new government's military establishment. Throughout the early national period, the Knox plan provided a basis of attempts to create a dependable military litary framework. This history reflects the importance of the nation's ideological origins on the initial evolution of its public policy.