Samuel Adams Quotes
A standing army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the liberties of the people. Such power should be watched with a jealous eye.
Adams, Samuel. Letter to James Warren, 7 Jan. 1776. The Writings of Samuel Adams, edited by Harry Alonzo Cushing, vol. 3, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907, p. 250.
These two states actually prohibited their legislatures from maintaining a standing army. Similar sentiments were in the constitutions or bill of rights of New Hampshire, Delaware, Maryland and Massachusetts but the option was left with the legislatures. A similar phrase appears in the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776.
Congress and most of the Founding Fathers were very distrustful of standing armies. They were aware that standing armies had taken over societies ever since ancient Rome and Julius Caesar.
This was the origin of the term "military-industrial complex." This speech was written by Malcolm Moos who first penned the term. However, conceptually it was referred to earlier by C. Wright Mills in 1954— {623497}.
This was an official publication of the U. S. Army. The First World War had very little affect on future military preparedness At that time conservatives in Congress were very isolationist and military preparedness was not a high priority or even a significant political issue. The Democrats then were more supportive of military spending than the Republicans. It took World War II, for which America was very unprepared, to produce a change in public and political opinion regarding military preparedness.
Commenting on the hostilities between the Baltic states and the Russian government:
President James Madison expressed a similar sentiment in his first inaugural address.
In early America, there was great concern about a standing army—a military force that exists and is organized in peacetime. History showed the founding fathers that tyrants who siezed power almost always did so by getting control of the standing army. The logic was if there is no standing army, no one can control it and therefore no tyrant can control the country by force. At the time, however, with oceans protecting us, there was penty of time to mobilize a defensive army should any foreign power invade. However, with modern military technology, and the importantance of retaliation as a protective3 strategy, it is virtually impossible to not have a standing army and stoll be secure.
This was in the midst of the debate over The Recharter Of The Bank bill
Washington, although the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, said almost nothing for such was the respect for him that he cou;d sway almost any issue. But the absurdity of limiting the size of the American Army was too much for him, and his clever way of phrasing his concern ended discussion of that idea without any ill feelings.
Originally it was published in Boston under the name “A Columbian Patriot.”
Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and one of the architects of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He was a second cousin to his fellow Founding Father, President John Adams.
