Hamilton continues the national army argument with F25. Perhaps it is his romantic attachment to arms (see, below, the last lines of his letter, at age 15, to his buddy Ned), but he really brings out the gems when arguing for the army, beginning with some projections on the lack of a national army.
As some states, facing threats in greater proportion, would ramp up defenses; other states might ramp up simply not to be outdone by their neighbors. I imagined a cold war of muskets and canons among the early American states while reading Hamilton’s column:
The States, to whose lot it might fall to support the necessary establishments, would be as little able as willing, for a considerable time to come, to bear the burden of competent provisions. The security of all would thus be subjected to the parsimony, improvidence, or inability of a part. If the resources of such part becoming more abundant and extensive, its provisions should be proportionally enlarged, the other States would quickly take the alarm at seeing the whole military force of the Union in the hands of two or three of its members, and those probably amongst the most powerful. They would each choose to have some counterpoise, and pretenses could easily be contrived. In this situation, military establishments, nourished by mutual jealousy, would be apt to swell beyond their natural or proper size; and being at the separate disposal of the members, they would be engines for the abridgment or demolition of the national authority.
On the notion that a national army is preferable to several state forces, the following is exemplary of Hamilton’s rhetoric of what would seem common sense (I’m reminded of Lincoln, here). Isn’t it better to have an army against which we are guarded?
As far as an army may be considered as a dangerous weapon of power, it had better be in those hands of which the people are most likely to be jealous than in those of which they are least likely to be jealous. For it is a truth, which the experience of ages has attested, that the people are always most in danger when the means of injuring their rights are in the possession of those of whom they entertain the least suspicion.
Apparently the anti-feds argued that we should perhaps only allow a standing army in time of conflict; or to not allow the Nation to raise an army during peace. To the former, Hamilton figures it will always be possible to plead conflict (Hamilton: “Indian hostilities, instigated by Spain or Britain, would always be at hand.” He’s probably right – think of post-WWII defense-spending rhetoric.) To the latter, Hamilton wonders why America ought to be the only nation “incapacitated by its Constitution to prepare for defense.”
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I was interested to read the following bit about a standing army as opposed to the militia. Still a novice in American history, I didn’t know much about the revolutionary-period militias. I reckoned they were what made up our army. Nope.
I’m about through with another Modern Scholar lecture series – this one is Joseph Ellis’ lectures on “founding brothers,” riffing from his well-regarded book. Just this morning, I listened to Ellis’ lecture on the war. One of his takeaway points was that we didn’t need to win, we just needed the British lose (the lecture also analogizes the strategic character of the Revolutionary War to that of Vietnam); and the British lost because they didn’t realize soon enough what they needed to go after. Rather than seize any geographical spot, they needed to destroy the revolutionary army. And, perhaps because Howe didn’t pursue Washington across New Jersey, the British lost their chance to really crush the American army.
Ellis urges that it is a myth (and was an early developed myth) that rag-tag militias won the war. The specifics of military history and strategic lessons aside, it was interesting to learn that there was a politics to the militia/army distinction; and to whom the credit for winning belonged. Connecting the dots, it makes sense: the army was national, the militias were state-mustered. I suppose I should have been a bit more on top of that history after Heller.
In any event, Ellis argues that Washington and Hamilton certainly embraced the conclusion that the army, not the militia, won the war (by not getting crushed; thus, by existing).
Which all makes this fit right in:
Here I expect we shall be told that the militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defense. This doctrine, in substance, had like to have lost us our independence. It cost millions to the United States that might have been saved. The facts which, from our own experience, forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion. The steady operations of war against a regular and disciplined army can only be successfully conducted by a force of the same kind.
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Finally, Hamilton argues that it does not matter what we put down as rules. Pointing to Shays’ Rebellion, he figures that the states will produce armed forces regardless of processes dictated by law: “how unequal parchment provisions are to a struggle with public necessity.”
Perhaps I’m feeling easily moved, but Hamilton seems to have really put out some solid rhetoric with F25.
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…I’m confident, Ned that my Youth excludes me from any hopes of immediate Perferment, nor do I desire it, but I mean to prepare the way for futurity, I’m no Philosopher you see and may be justly said to Build Castles in the Air, my Folly makes me ashamed and beg youll conceal it, yet Neddy we have seen such schemes successful when the Projector is Constant. I shall Conclude saying I wish there was a war.
