AmeriCorps

“ Remember the Americans who are doing so much to help others. Every day thousands of members of our new domestic Peace Corps,AmeriCorps, are working to make our people smarter, safer, and healthier. Out in rural Kansas, Nanci Ridge has been trained by AmeriCorps to give emergency medical assistance. Now every day she helps police or fire departments or teaches school kids safety. But she spent Thanksgiving fielding emergencies at the local county hospital, giving some of the regular staff the holiday off and keeping the country protected. ”

“ As a partner in progress, government can expand and strengthen this great American legacy. AmeriCorps, the Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America now provide service opportunities for more than a million of our citizens. ”

“ We can take great pride today in the numbers of energetic, idealistic Americans who are participating in service activities across our country and around the world. Almost 90,000 young men and women have served their communities through AmeriCorps during the past 4 years, tutoring students, mentoring children, building homes, fighting drug abuse. ”

“ Once employed in the service of the United States, the militia would become subject to the articles of war, and exposed to be punished with death, if they should leave a service, which by the constitution of their country, they are not bound to perform.
From an attentive consideration of the constitution and laws of the United States, it is evident to the Committee, that the militia of the several states are to be employed by the United States, for the purpose only of performing special services, in cases where no other military force could be conveniently had or properly exercised ”

“ With us, to-day, the law and regulations are that, no matter what may be the emergency, the commanding general in Texas, New Mexico, and the remote frontiers, cannot draw from the arsenals a pistol-cartridge, or any sort of ordnance-stores, without first procuring an order of the Secretary of War in Washington. The commanding general--though intrusted with the lives of his soldiers and with the safety of a frontier in a condition of chronic war--cannot touch or be trusted with ordnance-stores or property, and that is declared to be the law! ”

“ Economy should be insisted on, and first of all in the abolition of useless army posts and navy yards. The National Guard should be supervised and controlled by the Federal War Department. Training camps such as at Plattsburg should be provided on a nation-wide basis and the government should pay the expenses. Foreign-born as well as native-born citizens should be brought together in those camps; and each man at the camp should take the oath of allegiance as unreservedly and unqualifiedly as the men of its regular army and navy now take it. ”

“ In the United States, a volunteer corps or regiment “raises itself.” When the numbers are complete, and the officers are elected, if the government accept its services, both officers and men are then “mustered in”—In other words, sworn to serve for a fixed period, under exactly the same regulations as the regular troops, with like pay, rations, etc.
Note 2. The military corps first armed with Colt’s pistols was the regiment of Texan Rangers. Its first trial in actual warfare occurred in the war between the United States and Mexico in a skirmish with the guerilla band of Padre Jaranta. ”

“ The burden, however, of calling militia from their domestic avocations, at every threat of invasion, to watch every military post in each state, became so intolerable, that the people cast about for other expedients to relieve themselves from its weight. The plan of raising regular corps, to be exclusively under state authority, and thus be a perpetual substitute for the yeomanry of the country, presented itself as the most effectual and convenient mode of protecting the coasts from insult. ”

“ A steady, perhaps a quickened, pace in preparation for the defense of our sea port towns and waters; an early settlement of the most exposed and vulnerable parts of our country; a militia so organized that its effective portions can be called to any point in the Union, or volunteers instead of them to serve a sufficient time, are means which may always be ready, yet never preying on our resources until actually called into use. They will maintain the public interests while a more permanent force shall be in course of preparation. ”

“ The mere domestic police of the country could surely never require, in time of peace, so large a numerical force under arms as that which has always been supported in it; yet the military presidents, at once, sought to establish an army of officers, and by the enlistment of a body of commanders, entirely disproportionate to the number of rank and file, they immediately created a military order upon whose support they could rely so long as they possessed the means of patronage. ”

“ If by command of the President a company of troops were marched into this city to protect the subtreasury from threatened pillage, and in so doing life were taken, would not the act of the officer who commanded the troops be an act done in pursuance of the laws of the United States, and in the lawful exercise of its authority? ”

“ Our officers, and the Executive, naturally feeling some degree of sympathy for a people thus driven from their homes, on whom the evils of war fell with so much force, extended to them every aid in their power. Some were employed in the Commissary’s Department; some as contractors for transporting provisions; and others as attendants upon the army in all the various departments of service, so numerous in a time of war. Even the slaves who remained in the service of their masters were employed by the officers as guides, interpreters and employees at high wages. ”

“ So every day, many thousands of dedicated men and women are on duty—as air marshals, airport screeners, cargo inspectors, border patrol officers, and first responders. At the same time, Americans serving in the FBI and CIA are performing their daily work with professionalism, while we reform those agencies to see the dangers around the next corner. Our country is grateful to all our fellow citizens who watch for the enemy, and answer the alarms, and guard America by their vigilance. ”

“ Moreover, the conflict in the Gulf reminded all Americans that we can rely on our citizen-soldiers, the Reservists and National Guard members who responded so well when called upon to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their comrades in the regular components of the active duty military forces. We also saw that the American employer is prepared to stand behind the employee who is called to active military service and to safeguard that individual's employment rights while he or she is away. ”

“ Increasingly during this period the Army came to assume new responsibilities that called for units capable of extending national security authority along the new nation's frontiers. Serving essentially as military police, federal troops played a vital role throughout the settlement of the trans-Appalachian West. Because of the proximity of Army outposts and the general scarcity of civil law enforcement authority, settlers looked to the military as the primary source of law and order. ”

“ The Army is already on its way to the United States. That portion of it, as well regulars as volunteers, who engaged to serve during the war with Mexico will be discharged as soon as they can be transported or marched to convenient points in the vicinity of their homes. A part of the Regular Army will be employed in New Mexico and Upper California to afford protection to the inhabitants and to guard our interests in these territories. ”

“ He suggests measures for promoting the efficiency of the Army without adding to the number of its officers, and recommends the legislation necessary to increase the number of enlisted men to 30,000, the maximum allowed by law.
This he deems necessary to maintain quietude on our ever-shifting frontier; to preserve peace and suppress disorder and marauding in new settlements; to protect settlers and their property against Indians, and Indians against the encroachments of intruders; and to enable peaceable immigrants to establish homes in the most remote parts of our country. ”

“ Fourth, our defense must rest on trained manpower and its most economical and mobile use. A professional corps is the heart of any security organization. It is necessarily the teacher and leader of those who serve temporarily in the discharge of the obligation to help defend the Republic. Pay alone will not retain in the career service of our armed forces the necessary numbers of long-term personnel. ”

“ The essential requirement would have been to use State Department men for jobs that involved determining foreign policy, military men for tasks of a military nature and naval for navy work, and to recruit only after cadres had been established. The sponsorship of psychological warfare by one—any one—of the old-line departments might have slowed down the feverish tempo of reorganizations, quarrels, cabals, internal struggles for power and clashes with other Federal agencies which were so characteristic of OWI and its colleague organizations. ”

“ It has taught them that their conduct is under the supervision of the American government; that they depend on its care and protection; that no other government has power to regulate trade and send traders among them; finally, that an adherence to foreign counsels, and to antipacific maxims, can be visited upon them in measures of coercion. That their country, hitherto deemed nearly inaccessible, can be penetrated and traversed by men and troops, with baggage and provisions, even in midsummer, when the waters are lowest ”