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Are you saying that the first barbary war was funded by debt, or that Jefferson was a pacifist, or what exactly?
by jamieb 15y ago
Are you saying that the first barbary war was funded by debt, or that Jefferson was a pacifist, or what exactly?
- sp332 15y agoNot a pacifist, but he was against the idea of a standing army. And really, after seeing how Britain's army was behaving at the time, I don't blame him. http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24671 http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/2... The War of 1812 made it clear that any mechanized force could just walk all over us, and we needed a mechanized army simply for defense. This would require some industrialization. Of course the War of 1812 didn't cause the industrialization of America, it was just one huge reason an economy based almost completely on agriculture wasn't going to work for us.
- jamieb 15y agoJefferson wasn't against industrialisation, nor was he against a strong army. He just didn't want it to be a "standing army". He imagined that you might end up with an organization that is run by an elite, using canon fodder made up of the poor, that serves its own purposes. Would any of the founding fathers be surprised that we have a standing army and two totally pointless wars? Instead, he wanted every citizen to be required to do military service, as the swiss and israelis do. He believed that if every US citizen had military training, we would have wiped the floor with the canadians in 1812. I agree.