Happily, by the 29th column, Publius started defending particular passages of the proposed Constitution. Article I, sec. 8 grants to the federal Congress several explicit powers. Five subsections deal with armed forces: 8.12, 8.13, and 8.14 allow Congress to create an army and navy, and to make rules “for the government and regulation” of those forces. Section 8.15 allows Congress to “provide for calling forth the militia.” The difference between providing for such a calling forth and actually calling forth is an item we can discuss some other time. What the provision makes clear, though, is that whoever does the calling can do so “to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” Think Shays Rebellion. Or, more recently, Governor Wallace.
The first four subsections are not, though, the topic of Federalist 29. Rather, Hamilton responded in the column to anti-Federalists’ attacks on section 8.16, which grants to Congress the power:
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.
Bad enough was the prospect of a standing army; but here, the federal government presumed to take control of the state-based militias. Hamilton’s response, in a nutshell, is: (1) a well trained militia – which it will be if the federal government controls the training – will be a good militia all the better at preventing federal tyranny; (2) the better and more efficient the militia, the less need for a standing army; and (3) the militia will still be true to the states, because the states appoint the officers. In the next post, I thought it would be fun to present F29 and my thoughts after reading it as an imagined dialog between the ill-disguised characters, Jeff and Alex.
The socio-political context, here, is interesting. The following passages, I think, give a sense of the mood between the war and ratification. It was good politics to celebrate the militia’s contribution to the war. But, it seems to me, most realistic folks knew the need for a regular, well trained army.
From John Ferling’s A Leap in the Dark, page 190:
At the end of 1775, during the siege of Boston, Washington had watched with horror as his army of short-term enlistees went home. He implored Congress to mandate longer enlistments, even for the duration of the war. Congress refused and also rejected pleas for using bounties to induce men to reenlist. Its actions stemmed from an abiding fear of standing armies. Many in Congress considered a standing army an “armed monster” and an “infernal machine.” Samuel Adams, in language reminiscent of that which he had used during the British occupation of Boston after 1768, declared that soldiers in a standing army “are apt to consider themselves in a Body distinct from the rest of the citizens.” To the end of the war he wished that the Continental army consisted of militiamen conscripted for brief tours of duty.
And this, from George Washington (grabbed off of wikipedia):
To place any dependence on the Militia, is, assuredly, resting upon a broken staff. Men just dragged from the tender Scenes of domestic life; unaccustomed to the din of Arms; totally unacquainted with every kind of military skill, which being followed by a want of confidence in themselves, when opposed to Troops regularly trained, disciplined, and appointed, superior in knowledge and superior in Arms, makes them timid, and ready to fly from their own shadows…if I was called upon to declare upon Oath, whether the Militia have been most serviceable or hurtful upon the whole, I should subscribe to the latter.
