Philosophy aside, Mercy Otis
Warren’s Observations also provides
evidence of its author’s abundant knowledge of European history. Considering
the passion she displayed for that very topic as a child under the tutelage of
Rev. Jonathan Russel, and in light of the trajectory her later career took,
this should not come as much of a surprise. Warren’s 1805 publication, under
her own name, of one of the first histories of the American Revolution, the
pithily-titled History of the Rise,
Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, remains perhaps her
most enduring legacy in the popular mindset. That being said, the manner in
which Warren utilized various historical events, figures, or paradigms in the
earlier Observations demonstrates a
comprehension on her part of historical commonalities, trends, and patterns
that remains impressive even in a modern context. Not merely seeking precedent
to help buttress her own arguments, she seemed at least partially intent on
sharing with her reading audience a perspective on the events on the era in
which they lived that went beyond their everyday material circumstances and
connected them and their struggles to broader, century-spanning trends.
Section six of Observations contains the first such
attempt by Warren to explicate the larger historical pattern into which the
events transpiring in the United States in the 1780s best fit. This she entered
into in the midst of a discussion concerning the proposed constitution’s
endorsement of a standing army. Long the horror of American Whigs, Warren
likewise expressed her unequivocal dislike – “freedom revolts at the idea,” she
wrote – and thereafter held forth on the train of abuses in which peacetime
militaries had been historically involved. “Standing armies have been the
nursery of vice and the bane of liberty,” she wrote, “From the Roman legions to
the establishment of the artful Ximenes, and from the ruin of the Cortes of
Spain, to the planting of the British cohorts in the capitals of America.” The
Roman Legions to which she referred were undoubtedly those of the Empire rather
than the Republic; the soldiers of the former eventually grew so powerful that
they became the only constituency Roman authorities paid any heed to. Indeed,
on several occasions the Roman military overthrew the reigning Emperor and
either crowned one of their own number (as with Maximus Thrax in 235) or sold
the office to the highest bidder (as with Didius Julianus in 193). The “artful
Ximenes” was meanwhile likely a reference to Spanish Cardinal Francisco Jiménez
de Cisneros (1436-1517), regent of Castile during the minority of future King
of Spain Charles V (1500-1558). During his time as regent Jiménez ruled the
Kingdom of Castile in a highly autocratic manner, and in preparation for the
ascension of Charles to the throne ensured that the nobility was brought to
heel, secured the seat of royal power in Madrid, and saw to the formation of a
well-drilled standing army.
These preparations doubtless
aided Charles when he was forced to confront a revolt led by the Castilian
elites in 1520. The so-called “Revolt of the Comuneros” resulted from, among
other things, the political instability that had plagued Castile since the
death of Queen Isabella I (1451-1504), and the general “foreign-ness” of the
young King Charles (who was born and raised in what is now Belgium, and did not
even speak Castilian Spanish at the time he inherited the throne). The rebels,
led by disenchanted members of the nobility and the clergy, eventually
organized themselves into a self-styled “General Assembly of the Kingdom” and
claimed Charles’ mentally-ill mother Joanna as their Queen. This
semi-legitimate representative body was likely the “Cortes of Spain” Warren
referred to in Observations. The insurrection
was ultimately crushed and its leaders executed in 1521, thanks in no small
part to the superior numbers of Charles’ army. This fact Warren was likely
intent on highlighting in her criticism of the concept of a standing army; had
not Jiménez taken pains to organize a peacetime military on behalf of the young
King Charles, the Revolt of the Comuneros, and Spanish history in turn, might
have followed a very different course.
From examples of the sins wrought
by standing armies at various points in European history, Warren transitioned
in section six of Observations to,
“the planting of the British cohorts in the capitals of America.” This was no
doubt intended to refer to the stationing of large numbers of British regular
army personnel in the Americans colonies in the aftermath of the Seven Years
War (1756-1763). In all some 10,000 troops remained in North America after
hostilities came to an end in the early 1760s, for reasons that were both
practical and politically expedient. Among the soldiers that had been sent to
defend Britain’s North American possessions were something on the order of
1,500 officers, many of whom came from influential families that were
well-connected to members of Parliament and government ministers. Putting these
1,500 men out of work at a stroke would thus have wrought unfortunate
consequences for the administration responsible, and so it was deemed the more
prudent course to keep them on station in America. Practically speaking, the
presence of such a large force was thought to help ensure the security of
colonial possessions acquired during the recent conflict (the sprawling
hinterland of Quebec, for example), as well as ensure the safety of settler
populations in frontier regions that abutted on territory still inhabited by
Native tribes. The outbreak of Pontiac’s Rebellion in 1763, during which a
confederation of tribes from the Great Lakes region who were dissatisfied with
British policies in the newly acquired western territory initiated an
insurrection that lasted for three years, seemed to validate official reasoning
in very short order.
From the perspective of American
colonists who did not live on the frontier, however, the presence of such large
numbers of British troops in their homeland during a time of peace represented
a threat to their personal and political liberties. As Warren pointed out in Observations, standing armies had been
the source of much mischief over the course of European history from at least
the era of Ancient Rome. In the absence of an enemy to fight, many concerned
colonial citizens wondered, what was there to stop British soldiers from causing
trouble, absconding with private property, or becoming a force in colonial
politics? Could liberty be said to exist in Massachusetts, say, or Georgia, if
the governors of these colonies could call upon a ready supply of soldiers as a
means of enforcing unpopular, or even legally questionable, policies? This was
a problem that Warren, and many of those among her reading audience, had
confronted during her own lifetime. The presence of British troops in America
in the 1760s had place a sizable financial burden on the British Parliament (£225,000
per year in the 1760s, equivalent to £29,000,000 in the 2010s), who in turn tried to pass the cost
along to the colonies by levying taxes on, among other things, sugar, tea,
glass, and paper. When British soldiers were order into Boston in 1768 in
response to the protests that emerged in response to these taxes, it put in
motion the sequence of events leading to the Boston Massacre in October, 1770.
In addition to clashing with Enlightenment and republican philosophical theory,
to which many among the American elite were sympathetic, the presence of a
standing army in North America in the 1760s and 1770s directly and negatively
impacted the lives of countless colonial citizens. Of this Warren sought to
remind her audience, for it doubtless seemed to her that the nascent United
States was preparing to take a step backwards.
The aspect of the proposed
constitution that gave Warren cause for concern was likely to be found in the
latter half of Section Eight. Therein, authority was allocated to Congress, “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 [,]” as well as, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute
the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions [.]” While this might seem a rather
innocuous stipulation to a 21st-century audience accustomed to the
idea of the United States as a global military power, the implication of a
provision like this was no doubt ample cause for concern for members of the
Founding Generation. Though the Continental Army had been, during its existence
in the late 1770s and early 1780s, an instrument of Congress not necessarily
beholden to the governments of any of the states, it had been born of the
necessity of war and essentially ceased to exist once peace was declared in
1783. What remained was a much-reduced force, 700 men organized into a single
regiment, relegated to the defence of outposts on the young nation’s far
western frontier. Though opposed by certain philosophical purists who believed
any standing army at all was unacceptable, the formation of the First (and at
the time only) American Regiment was deemed acceptable by a majority of delegates
in Congress in 1784.
The clauses enshrined in Section
Eight of the proposed constitution intended to define Congressional authority
over the militia, however, could easily have been construed to fly in the face
of this post-Revolutionary consensus surrounding the existence of a standing
military. The Articles of Confederation, which the new national charter was
intended to replace, granted no such authority to Congress, instead mandating
in Article Six that the respective states maintain adequate militias
themselves. To instead give Congress responsibility for organizing, arming, disciplining,
and governing the militia was potentially tantamount to granting them control
over an army of their own design, to be put to use at their own behest. As if
to confirm this worry, the Constitution also stated explicitly that said
militia could be commanded by Congress, “to execute the Laws of the Union,” and
to, “suppress Insurrections [.]” Had not these been the same purposes to which
the British attempted to put their own military in the 1760s and 1770s? If the
United States of America was to be a representative republic, whereby the
rights of the people were held to be of paramount importance, why the need for
a mechanism of military coercion codified within the nation’s governing
charter?
As Warren attempted to explain by
an artful arrangement of historical examples, the dangers represented by a
standing army were very real, and very well-established. Ancient Rome and
Imperial Spain had fallen prey to political corruption and social repression
because they had tolerated the existence of military establishments during
times of peace, and British America had nearly met the same fate. Fortunately
the citizens of the various American colonies had proven themselves unwilling
to countenance the existence of an armed soldiery within their midst whose
loyalty was to a far-distant monarch. The Revolution swept away this threat
entirely, and though there remained an American military presence on the
western verges of the young republic into the 1780s, it was, as aforementioned,
much reduced compared to the strength of the Continental Army at its height. Warren
and her Anti-Federalist cohorts no doubt considered this a great victory, and
so the apparent desire of the Framers of the proposed constitution to place
coercive military authority in the hands of Congress likely appeared as an
unwelcome reverse. The Revolution had been waged to break the cycle of history,
as Warren described it in Observations;
why turn back? Why invite the risks that inevitably accompanied the existence
of a standing army? Like many of the Anti-Federalist commentators, Warren’s
criticisms of the United States Constitution evinced a notable sense of pride
in the accomplishments of the Revolution, and a sense of abject disappointment
that any among her countrymen were evidently so willing to cast those
accomplishments aside. And as befitted her intellectual sensibilities, she
expressed this disappointment through the lens of history and the lessons it
had to impart.
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