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September 29 -Creating a Standing Army
On this day in Labor History the year was 1789.
That was the day that the United States Congress officially created the United States army.
Not everyone agreed that the U.S. should have a standing army.
Two years earlier, at the meeting that drafted the U.S. Constitution, James Madison warned against a permanent federal army.
He told those at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.”
Since Madison was a strong proponent of a centralized federal government, his caution about the army was…
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