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Post 23 Mar 2011, 5:07 pm

I'd post this under history, but since it's not available it falls here.

US Constitution, Article I Sec 8:

....

[Congress]

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

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;

....

It appears from a straightforward reading of this that the authors did not intend for there to be a continuous standing army, a navy yes, but not an army.

Possible questions:
Was this realistic?
Did it play a role in the way the Civil War unfolded?
Other?
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Post 24 Mar 2011, 5:00 am

Well, quite frankly, it doesn't say that you can't have one. The only restriction is that an appropriation can't budget for more than two years. A perfectly literal reading implies that every two years, you can rebudget new funds. Once the first army is raised, as long as Congress consents to keep it funded, a standing army seems perfectly within the limits of the Constitution.
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Post 24 Mar 2011, 10:58 am

I agree with Ozy. As a matter of fact (or perhaps opinion), I have never seen an interpretation from a reputable source that Art. I, sec. 8, cl. 12 did not intend for a permanent standing army.

Isn't that a redundancy any way. Isn't a standing army by definition continuous and permanent? Hence the adjective standing
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Post 25 Mar 2011, 8:42 pm

I suppose Civil War questions likely always need there own thread. It's not too controversial to suggest that military functions became more centralized as a result of the Civil War. Maybe that's enough on that matter.

Some might fight this rather long historical background interesting. It's conclusion regarding individual gun rights is also interesting:
Standing Armies And Armed Citizens: An Historical Analysis of The Second Amendment By Roy G. Weatherup

I can't say that a standing army is expressly forbidden, but wariness and desire to limit it seems quite clear. As exemplified in the Virginia Convention's 17th Principal:
That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defence of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power.
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Post 26 Mar 2011, 12:10 pm

Neal Anderth wrote:It's not too controversial to suggest that military functions became more centralized as a result of the Civil War. Maybe that's enough on that matter.


Hogwash. The entire standing United States Army was about 10 regiments prior to the ACW. After the ACW, the entire United States Army was about 15 Regiments. (to really grasp the size, a regiment was about 1,000 men). Both before and after the war these regiments were split up into company/troop (Infantry/Cavalry, approximately 100 men each) detachments spread throughout the country.

Further, post-ACW there really wasn't a national standard of training for the local Militias. As a matter of fact, militia weekends were still more of the community picnic they had been prior to the ACW. It wasn't until after the Spanish American War showed the deplorable training levels of the State Militias that a national standard of training was truely established. However, even then the size of the actual regular army was still relatively small. It wasn't until post-WWII that he size of the American Army really reached it large size.
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Post 27 Mar 2011, 6:17 pm

I posted a reply to this in the politics forum, this is a non-issue as the funding is appropriated by Congress every year. Hell, right from the start, the revolution and required army took longer than the two years, it has never stopped "being" from day one, not because the Constitution was broken from the start but the funding was allocated every year since that time.
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Post 27 Mar 2011, 9:37 pm

Sorry, but the bigger question is this: who cares?

More specifically, why do Americans care so much about what the Constitution (or The Founding Fathers) intended?

Hear me out.

For a good portion of your history the consensus view was insular: we'll run our own corner of the world our own way, the rest can do what it wants. Fair enough. There were significant disputes regarding what "our corner" of the world comprised, but it took the US time to become a major world power. At some point it was realised that in order to secure your corner of the world you had to confront threats to it at the source instead of when they hit your shores. I would perhaps cite the attack on Pearl Harbour and the following event of the Pacific Theatre of WWII as an example. To a certain extent this is merely common sense, yet it is also probably UnConstitutional.

Still, since WWII the US has faced this conundrum: be true to your isolationist roots, or engage the wider world. You have chosen the latter, and rightly so for it offers the greater chance for self protection. Maintaining a standing army is the price you have to pay for that - the answer to this question is that simple.

As an illustration of how ridiculous and pointless a question this topic really is, consider this:

Where in the Constiution does it state the need (or lack of) a standing Air Force? Or a nuclear deterent? That's right, it doesn't, and nor could it, for it is an influential document of the past, not a prescription for Utopia in the present. After all, as brilliant and virtuous as the Founding Fathers who framed the Constitution are reputed to have been, they were not seers - they were not capable of seeing how the world would change over a couple of centuries and plan accordingly. Hence my initial counter-argument to the question posed: who cares what the Consitution says? The modern era is well beyond its remit, so why even pose the question?
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Post 28 Mar 2011, 12:09 pm

By the way, one reason that the Navy was not subject to the same limit is quite obvious - a ship lasts a long time, and takes a long time to build. So changing appropriations every two years could seriously hamper attempts to build a stable naval force. This was as true 200 years ago as it is today. Whereas, if you had a fair number of men who were in a militia or could undergo training, building an army in times of need would be pretty quick.

What has happened since WWII (not the ACW) is that the US has maintained a large (and costly) standing defence. The Cold War was the stated reason for this, and since then the 'peace dividend' has not been seen.

But on the point about the Constitution, it's pretty clear that it's the appropriation that needs to be time-limited, not the army that appropriations would pay for. The language is very clear.
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Post 28 Mar 2011, 8:13 pm

danivon wrote:By the way, one reason that the Navy was not subject to the same limit is quite obvious - a ship lasts a long time, and takes a long time to build. So changing appropriations every two years could seriously hamper attempts to build a stable naval force.


Interestingly this is almost exactly what happened. Check out the story of the "Six Frigates". The law to build the Frigates was passed in 1794. Jefferson had most of the put in ordinary when he became President in favor of a system of militia style gunboats for coastal defense. Then when Madison was President and the lead up to the War of 1812 was happening, those ships were taken out of ordinary.
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Post 04 Apr 2011, 8:53 am

Archduke Russell John wrote:The entire standing United States Army was about 10 regiments prior to the ACW. After the ACW, the entire United States Army was about 15 Regiments. (to really grasp the size, a regiment was about 1,000 men). Both before and after the war these regiments were split up into company/troop (Infantry/Cavalry, approximately 100 men each) detachments spread throughout the country.


I have been trying to find the firm numbers on the post-ACW army size. According to the Historical Dictionary of the Spanish American War, as of April 1, 1898 the U.S. Army consisted of 2,143 officers and 26,040 enlisted men.