In honor of Constitution Day (September 17)

Introduction

National military intervention is in many ways encoded into the Republic's DNA. American colonists' first brush with large-scale unrest after the Revolution vividly exposed the problems of voluntary military cooperation established under the Articles of Confederation. Demobilizations after the Revolutionary War left the Continental Army with a small band of 600 regulars scattered between arsenals in Massachusetts and New York City. The Articles granted Congress authority to declare war and raise land and naval forces, but relied upon states' assemblies as sovereign entities to finance their own militia during peacetime.

The outbreak of Shay's Rebellion in 1786, combined with the specter of future insurrection outside of Massachusetts and conflicts on the frontier with Native tribes, more than cemented the Federalists' case for strengthened national institutions including an energetic presidency and a peacetime standing army (Adams, 197).

Unrest in Pennsylvania lent additional credence to Federalists' claims that the gravest threats to domestic security were most likely to materialize from inside the fledgling Republic, rather than from distant European shores, native peoples, or neighboring colonies. Madison and Hamilton argued that violent swings between tyranny and anarchy had ultimately consumed the ancient republics of Sparta and Rome. The Constitution, built on ?a new science of politics, prescribed institutional solutions to these particularly republican maladies that would enable, government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself A vast, diverse, compound republic would make majority factions difficult to form, thereby diluting the problem of anarchy.

Contemporary Relevance and Scholarly Lacunae

As Hurricane Katrina barreled toward Louisiana in late August 2005, Governor Kathleen Blanco declared Louisiana in a state of emergency. Fearing the worst as the storm neared New Orleans, she sent a letter to President Bush a day later requesting a federal emergency declaration. Blanco's letter comported with federal protocol and the Stafford Act of 1988, requiring governors to submit a written request for federal disaster assistance before presidents may initiate relief efforts. Picking up on the boilerplate nature of her request, Douglas Brinkley notes, ?If Blanco's message to Bush had been an emphatic letter or frantic telephone call, and not merely a legal form—if it had actually communicated what was not happening in Louisiana (i.e., evacuation)—various U.S. government agencies might have mobilized more quickly. For a storm that ultimately killed over 1,500 people and generated the most gruesome scenes that the American public ...