Abstract
In 1814, members of the United States’ House of Representatives found themselves embroiled in an increasingly heated debate over the appropriate means of raising additional troops for the war that the nation was then engaged in; its second armed conflict against Great Britain. In January of that year, leading American spokesman, nationalist and politician Daniel Webster reminded the House that ‘[u]nlike the old nations of Europe, there are in this country no dregs of population, fit only to supply the constant waste of war … Armies of any magnitude can here be nothing but the people embodied,’ he asserted, ‘and if the object be one for which the people will not embody, there can be no armies.’ The issue remained unresolved between those who would utilise the state militias, and those who preferred that a more regular, federal force be raised to deal with the military threat to the nation’s borders. A suspicion both of military coercion and of standing armies, along with the belief that America was never intended for ‘a great military nation’ informed much of the debate, but one main assumption underlay it. The American fighting man, the symbol of the nation’s military prowess, was perceived to be the citizen-soldier, a New World Cincinnatus, exemplified by George Washington during the Revolutionary war and found again in the War of 1812, a war fought by an army ‘collected hastily from the plough, the loom, and the workshops — without discipline, without even the rudiments of the military science,’ yet nevertheless capable of ‘deeds of heroism and of gallant daring that would have done honour to the best days of Greece and Rome.’2
I do not desire to see military roads established for the purpose of conquest but of defence; and as a part of that preparation which should be made in a season of peace for a season of war. I do not wish to see this country ever in that complete state of preparation for war for which some contend; that is, that we should constantly have a large standing army, well disciplined, and always ready to act.
Henry Clay, 13 March 18181
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© 2009 Susan-Mary Grant
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Grant, SM. (2009). A Season of War: Warriors, Veterans and Warfare in American Nationalism. In: Carvalho, S., Gemenne, F. (eds) Nations and their Histories. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245273_15
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