Customer Reviews

Mr. Jefferson's Army: Political and Social Reform of the Military Establishment, 1801-1809 (The American Social Experience No. 6)

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This is an excellent military history book showing how a Republican Predsident stood down a chiefly Federlist Army. When Thomas Jefferson was elected President of the United States after John Adams the army needed political and social reform.

There was a need for a military academy to produce trained officers for all branches of the service. This is when the establishment of West Point came into being. Jefferson and his Secretary of War, Henry Dearborn went to work whipping the army into shape, a respectable force of 9000 men.

Prior to the Jefferson Administration the army consisted of patronage to the Federlist Party... no doubt from the influence of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington. Now, the task at hand, was to reform this military establishment. West Point was to become the training academy for the otherwise poorly prepared sons of the Republican faithful.

What once was paradoxical, Jefferson long viewed antithetical to a standing army, would create a military school. Jefferson is the man of paradox personified. Reading this book we see Jefferson come to terms with his army. Only later in James Madison's administration who became indifferent an inadequate to its maintainance undid much of what Jefferson and Dearborn created.

This is an excellent book with solid research and well documented. We get an idea of what it was like in a day at West Point early on after its inception.

This is an excellent work of military history of the United States.

Theodore Crackel's " Mr Jefferson's Army" is an excellent study of Thomas Jefferson's reform of the US military. Jefferson " republicanized" the military by downsizing and making it more efficient. He removed hostile Federalist officers who were adverse to republican principles. Jefferson is often critisized by people who like a standing military and bureaucracy. Jefferson saw both as hostile to liberty and the Republic. Crackel details how Jefferson remodeled the military by creating military academies such as West Point, and the Army Corp of Engineers. Jefferson saw the military no different than other aspects of society- to be republicanized. Overall a great read.