In June of 1787, James Madison addressed the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on the dangers of a permanent army. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty,” he argued. “The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.” That Madison, one of the most vocal proponents of a strong centralized government—an author of the Federalist papers and the architect of the Constitution—could evince such strongly negative feelings against a standing army highlights the substantial differences in thinking about national security in America between the 18th century and the 21st.

While polls today generally indicate that Americans think of the military in glowing terms (rightly associating terms like “sacrifice,” “honor,” “valor,” and “bravery” with military service), Americans of the 18th century took a much dimmer view of the institution of a professional army. A near-universal assumption of the founding generation was the danger posed by a standing military force. Far from being composed of honorable citizens dutifully serving the interests of the nation, armies were held to be “nurseries of vice,” “dangerous,” and “the grand engine of despotism.” Samuel Adams wrote in 1776, such a professional army was, “always dangerous to the Liberties of the People.” Soldiers were likely to consider themselves separate from the populace, to become more attached to their officers than their government, and to be conditioned to obey commands unthinkingly. The power of a standing army, Adams counseled, “should be watched with a jealous Eye.”

Experiences in the decades before the Constitutional Convention in 1787 reinforced colonists’ negative ideas about standing armies. Colonials who fought victoriously alongside British redcoats in the Seven Years’ War concluded that the ranks of British redcoats were generally filled with coarse, profane drunkards; even the successful conclusion of that conflict served to confirm colonists’ starkly negative attitudes towards the institution of a standing army. The British Crown borrowed massively to finance the conflict (the war doubled British debt, and by the late 1760s, fully half of British tax pokiesaustralian.com revenue went solely to pay the interest on those liabilities); in an effort to boost its revenues, Parliament began to pursue other sources of income in the colonies more aggressively. In the decade before the Declaration of Independence, Parliament passed a series of acts intended to raise money within the colonies.

That legislation further aggravated colonists’ hostility towards the British Army. As tensions between the colonies and the crown escalated, many colonists came to view the British army as both a symbol and a cause of Parliament’s unpopular policies. Colonists viewed the various revenue-generating acts as necessitated by the staggering costs associated with maintaining a standing army. The Quartering Act, which required colonists to provide housing and provisions for troops in their own buildings, was another obnoxious symbol of the corrupting power represented by the army. Many colonists held the sentiment that the redcoats stationed in the colonies existed not to protect them but to enforce the king’s detestable policies at bayonet-point.

No event crystallized colonists’ antagonism towards the British army more clearly than what became known as the Boston Massacre. In March 1770, British regulars fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five. That event provided all the proof the colonists needed of the true nature of the redcoats’ mission in the colonies. Six years later, the final draft of the Declaration of Independence contained numerous references to King George’s militarism (particularly his attempts to render the army independent of civilian authority, his insistence on quartering the troops among the people, and his importation of mercenaries to “compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny”); by the end of the War of Independence, hatred of a standing army had become a powerful and near-universal tradition among the American people; the professional British army was nothing less than a “conspiracy against liberty.”

Colonists’ experiences with British troops, and the convictions that sprang from them, help explain Madison’s reference to armies having traditionally “enslaved” the people they were commissioned to defend. After winning their political independence, the victorious colonies faced the difficult task of providing for their own security in the context of a deep-seated distrust of a standing military.

Madison’s use of the imagery of slavery points to the multiple meanings of that term in the 18th century. In Madison’s statement to the Convention, it referred not to the literal notion of armies marching the citizenry through the streets in shackles but to a kind of metaphorical slavery. The immense costs necessary to raise and maintain a standing army (moneys required for pay, uniforms, rations, weapons, pensions, and so forth) would burden the populace with an immense and crippling tax burden that would require the government to confiscate more and more of the citizenry’s wealth in order to meet those massive expenses. Madison’s language reflected a common concern that the maintenance of a standing army in the new United States would place similar burdens on the young government; their experiences with the British army under Parliament in the 1760s and 1770s likewise led to concerns that the executive would use a standing army to force unpopular legislation on an unwilling public in similar fashion.

Other members of the founding generation worried that an armed, professional force represented an untenable threat to the liberty of the people generally. Throughout history, the threat of military coup—governments deposed from within by the very forces raised to protect them—has been a frequent concern. In 1783, Continental Army officers encamped at Newburgh circulated documents that leveled a vague threat against Congress if the government continued its refusal to pay the soldiers. Historians generally conclude that a full-blown coup d’etat was never a realistic possibility, but the incident did little to assuage contemporary concerns about the dangers posed by a standing army.

The experience with professional armies during the 40 years before the Constitutional Convention, and the values that sprang from those experiences, helps explain why the founders never seriously considered maintaining the Continental Army past the end of the War of Independence. The beliefs that grew organically from their experiences with the British also help explain Madison’s passionate anti-military rhetoric (he would later refer to the establishment of a standing army under the new Constitution as a “calamity,” albeit an inevitable one); together, they cast a long shadow over the debates surrounding the kind of military the new nation would provide for itself.

Although at times the 1787 Constitutional Convention became bogged down in details, the delegates generally debated the “big picture” of crafting a new fundamental document for the United States. Given that bias for the larger topics, it is not surprising the delegates did not discuss at any length the age requirement for serving as a member of the House of Representatives, in the Senate, or as the President. What concerned them was not the age of the individual, but the quality of the representation provided to the people by those individual federal representatives.

During the convention, on May 29, 1787, Edmund Randolph of Virginia proposed what is now known as the Virginia Plan, originally drafted by James Madison. The fourth resolution stated: “that the members of the branch of the national Legislature ought to be elected by the people of the several States every           for the term of           ; to be the age of           years at least . . .” Randolph and Madison left the specifics of elections and the ages of the members of the legislatures open for the convention to debate. Several weeks later, on June 22, the conversation in the convention turned to the issue of the election, length of service, and age of eligibility for members of the House. George Mason of Virginia rose and proposed 25 years of age as a qualification for the members of the first branch (House of Representatives). Mason’s motion passed seven states in favor, three opposed, and New York divided. Three days later, the convention took up Randolph’s resolution again, this time addressing the second branch (the Senate), and unanimously agreed to the clause requiring the age of members to be at least 30 years of age.

Since what most concerned the members of the convention were what Mason called “the danger of the majority oppressing the minority, and the mischievous influence of demagogues,” details such as the specific ages required to become representatives and senators did not rise to the level of major debate. Other issues were deemed far more important, such as how to elect the executive and the specific powers of the president, because of the controversial and dangerous nature of the proposed executive. The age requirements for president were included in the final recommendations that were agreed to by the Committee of Eleven (one member from every state). These required that the president be a “natural born citizen” at the time of the Constitution’s adoption, must have lived in the United States at least 14 years, and be no less than 35 years old.

Further evidence that the supporters of the proposed 1787 Constitution considered the issue of ages a detail can be found in the Federalist Papers. What concerned Publius (the pseudonym used by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay) was not the age of the representatives (mentioned only in passing in Federalist 51-54), but the timing and frequency of elections to maintain accountability to the people in the states. Biennial elections allowed representatives to reflect the changing moods of the electorate at home while providing institutional stability in the House.

The Federalist Papers also address requirements for office. In Federalist 62, Publius examines the constitutional requirement for becoming a senator. Again, it was not the age of the individual that mattered so much as the length of residency in the country and the individual’s level of maturity. The differing requirements for Senate (vs. House of Representatives), Publius wrote, “is explained by the nature of their senatorial trust; which requiring greater extent of information and stability of character, requires at the same time that the senator should have reached a period of life most likely to supply these advantages.” So too with the proposed presidency; Publius argues in Federalist 67-71 that the older age was needed because of the burden, trust, and perspectives needed in an executive.

Thus, while it would be wrong to say that the members of the Federal Convention assigned the ages haphazardly, it would also be wrong to say that they spent much time debating the virtues of 25, 30, and 35 years old to hold federal elected office. Rather, they followed the patterns already established in the states, and they increased the ages as the importance and burdens of federal office increased.