ABSTRACT
At the United States of America’s founding, the crafters of the Constitution determined that one of the cornerstones of a representative government was to have the federal military subordinate to civil authority. This subordination was explicitly placed in the Constitution, including in designating the civilian president as commander in chief and placing federal military funding in the hands of Congress every two years. But the subordination was also effected through the small size of the federal army, the creation of state controlled militias, and, during Jefferson’s presidency, by the enactment of the Articles of War, which prohibited soldiers from not only disparaging the president, but also Congress. This basic construct remained intact through 1860, and after the end of Reconstruction, it returned until 1917. The United States’ participation in the First World War was brief, and although historians have rightfully noted that civil and individual rights were barely protected between 1917 and 1920, with the election of President Warren G. Harding and a Republican-dominated Congress, the nation returned to its prewar construct of an army that was small and hardly intrusive in American society.1
