![]() ![]() ![]() The new military mechanism needed to be adapted to American liberalism, giving serious consideration to the traditional fears of a permanent standing army as a body that might injure the rights of the individual and society.ģ This article presents an additional point rarely covered in detail elsewhere: The decision to set up a regular army based on the eighteenth century European model (prior to the French Revolution) also came from the experience of military operations in the revolution, especially in the southern colonies.ġ6 Washington understood, especially after the fall of New York (August 1776), that his small army was not capable of defending all the cities in America, but his strategic conclusion was that as long as a regular American army existed the revolution would also continue to exist. There is hardly any discussion of the assumption that those who wanted a regular army had argued for this because of their military experience in the revolution. But the book positions this debate within the general discussions about the power and authority of the central government in relation to geo-strategic threats against the new republic. 3 The most outstanding and important study on the debate concerning the post-war character of the army is that of Richard Kohn, 4 who deals with the disagreements between the federalists and the anti-federalists. ![]() 2 While many argued for continuing the system of militias, which meant continuing the responsibility of the states, there were those who argued that a central government also needed to have a military force that would be based on a regular army, a navy, a system of forts, arsenals, a military industry and a military academy for professional officers. ![]()
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