They Didn’t Dare Teach This in History

Posted on August 11, 2007 in History War

From Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, pp. 302-303:

…antimilitarism spread well beyond pacifist circles, as is indicated by the closing down of the militia in most states. Also notable in this regard were the repeated calls to close West Point military academy. As the Ohio legislative told Congress in 1834, an academy that taught the art of war was “wholly inconsistent with the spirit and genius of our liberal institutions”. The legislatures of three other states — Tennessee, Connecticut, and New Hampshire — also passed resolutions calling on Congress to shut down West Point, and no less than the frontier hero Davy Crockett introduced one such resolution in the House of Representatives in 1830 condeming militarism as contrary to the genius of a free people. In 1844, the House came within a single vote of cutting off the academy’s appropriation. A great many Americans in the age of Jackson saw everything military and violent as a direct contraindication of democracy.

I have to add that West Point was the training ground for many who sought to destroy the Union in order to preserve slavery.

Today’s military — operated by the Bush/Cheney cabal — certainly functions to suppress and ignore democractic imperatives.