For Madison, the worry about a standing army wasn’t minor. A standing army was understood to pose an existential threat to a self-governing republic. The paradigm case was Rome, which had devolved from a republic into an unfree empire ruled by Caesars precisely because generals used the army to coerce the city into obedience. Madison cited Rome at the constitutional convention in the course of asserting that “the means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

And Madison believed that modern absolutist rule similarly depended on the maintenance of standing armies by rulers. “Throughout all Europe,” he argued, “the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”

Freedom from tyranny

But even the Constitution as drafted — which gave Congress, not the president, the power to declare war and raise an army — didn’t satisfy skeptics that the Republic would be sufficiently protected. At the state ratifying conventions, there were calls for a constitutional amendment to protect against the danger of the standing army.