Again reflecting the truly democratic nature of American government, the framers left it to Congress to create an army and a navy lest the president be inclined to misuse the potent but limited powers of the Commander-in-Chief.
This barrier to militarism was quickly removed:
<<< One notable case, with long-term consequences reaching directly to Indochina, was the "exhibition of murder and plunder known as the First Seminole War, ...one part of the American policy aimed at removing or eliminating native Americans from the Southeast," as William Weeks describes General Andrew Jackson's "campaign of terror, devastation, and intimidation" against the Seminoles in 1818 in Spanish Florida, in his study of Adams's diplomacy. The Spanish Minister concluded that "the war against the Seminoles has been merely a pretext for General Jackson to fall, as a conqueror, upon the Spanish provinces...for the purposes of establishing there the dominion of this republic upon the odious basis of violence and bloodshed" -- "strong language from a diplomat," Weeks writes, "yet a painfully precise description of how the United States first came to control the province of Florida."
As Secretary of State, Adams had the task of justifying what General Jackson had achieved. So he did, using the opportunity to establish the doctrine of executive war without congressional approval that was extended to new dimensions in the Indochina wars. Adams presented the justification and novel doctrine in his "greatest state paper," as the noted contemporary historian Samuel Flagg Bemis calls it admiringly, a document that impressed Thomas Jefferson as being "among the ablest I have ever seen, both as to logic and style." This racist diatribe, full of extraordinary lies, was designed to "transform the officially unauthorized conquest of foreign territory [Florida] into a patriotic act of self-defense and the United States from aggressor into aggrieved victim," Weeks observes. He suggests that Adams may have been inspired by Tacitus, "his favorite historian," who caustically observed that "Crime once exposed had no refuge but in audacity." Steeped in the classical tradition, the founders of the Republic appreciated the sentiment. >>>
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Tom |
