SEPTEMBER 29, 1789 — THIS DAY IN AMERICAN HISTORY: What Ambazonia Can Learn From the Day America Put Its Army on Constitutional Footing

The United States did not merely inherit soldiers. It brought those soldiers within its emerging constitutional order. That may be the most useful lesson from that day for contemporary Ambazonian nation-building discussions: The struggle to establish a country and the discipline required to govern one are not the same task. The first may create an opportunity for sovereignty. The second determines whether institutions can make sovereignty durable.

By Lester Maddox
Guest Contributor
The Independentist News
Oakland, California

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On September 29, 1789, the final day of the First United States Congress’s first session, Congress enacted legislation that formally recognized and adapted America’s existing military establishment to the newly adopted Constitution. It did not create an army from nothing. Rather, Congress took a small military force inherited from the Continental Congress and the Articles of Confederation and placed it on a constitutional footing under the new federal government. (Library of Congress)

That distinction matters—and it is what makes this episode in American history relevant to contemporary discussions about Ambazonia, the name used by advocates of independence for the former British Southern Cameroons. The early American republic confronted a fundamental problem of state-building: political independence required institutions capable of protecting the constitutional order. The United States had declared independence in 1776 and fought a war to secure it. After ratification of the Constitution, however, the new government still faced the practical question of how military power would be organized, governed, financed, and made accountable within the new republic. The answer was not simply to keep armed men in the field. It was to connect military authority to constitutional authority.

President George Washington pressed the new government to regularize the military establishment. On August 7, 1789, he addressed Congress on frontier and security concerns. On August 10, he specifically transmitted to the Senate a statement of the troops then in service and explained that the existing force needed to be conformed by law to the Constitution. Congress ultimately acted on September 29. (Library of Congress)

The resulting statute did several important things. It recognized the existing troops, continued their pay and allowances, and required commissioned officers, noncommissioned officers, and privates to swear or affirm that they would support the Constitution of the United States and bear true allegiance to the United States of America. It also required obedience to the president and officers lawfully appointed over them. (Library of Congress Tile)

For the specific purpose of protecting frontier inhabitants from hostile incursions, the act also authorized the president to call state militia into federal service. The measure was temporary and remained in force only until the end of the next session of Congress. ( U.S. Army History)

The force itself was remarkably small. U.S. Army historical records place its authorized strength at 840 men, while Secretary of War Henry Knox reported only 672 men actually in service in August 1789. America therefore did not begin its constitutional military history with a vast professional army. It began with a modest force and an emerging system of constitutional authority. (U.S. Army History)

So what can those who advocate an independent Ambazonia learn from September 29, 1789? The first lesson is that nation-building does not begin when everything is already perfect. The United States did not wait until it possessed a massive professional military, an enormous treasury, or a mature federal bureaucracy before establishing rules around national defense. It began with what existed and progressively constructed legal authority, institutions, financing, command structures, and accountability around it. That distinction is relevant to serious discussions about the political future of Southern Cameroons.

Whatever position one takes on independence, federalism, autonomy, or another political settlement, the American experience illustrates that political aspirations eventually encounter institutional questions. Declarations are not institutions. A flag is not an administration. An armed force is not yet a constitutional security system. Political authority becomes durable when there are clear rules governing who may exercise power, under what authority, within what limits, and subject to whose oversight.

The second lesson follows directly: Military power must ultimately operate within constitutional authority. The September 1789 legislation did not merely acknowledge soldiers. It required constitutional allegiance and placed military service within a lawful command structure. The broader U.S. Constitution divided military responsibilities between institutions. Congress received authority to raise and support armies, regulate military forces, provide appropriations, and organize the militia, while the president became commander in chief. Army appropriations were limited constitutionally to periods of no more than two years, reflecting the founding generation’s concern about unchecked standing military power. (U.S. Army History)

For advocates of an independent Ambazonia, this raises an important institutional question: If independence is the objective, what should ultimately be the constitutional relationship among civilian political authority, security institutions, military commanders, and the people? That question cannot be answered merely by battlefield developments. An armed political struggle can generate commanders, units, networks, territorial structures, and wartime institutions. Transforming those structures into the institutions of a durable constitutional state is a different undertaking. A functioning state requires institutions capable of surviving the individuals who temporarily lead them. That means considering not simply how security forces fight, but how they would eventually be authorized, financed, professionalized, commanded, regulated, audited, and held accountable.

The American experience also contains an important warning against romanticizing military power. The founding generation remained deeply suspicious of standing armies and concentrated military authority. Constitutional powers were therefore divided rather than placed entirely in one institution. Congress retained major legislative and financial responsibilities while the president exercised command. (U.S. Army History)

The September 1789 statute was itself temporary. Congress returned to the issue on April 30, 1790, with a more comprehensive military law. Institution-building was therefore a process, not a single legislative event. U.S. Army History. That history raises another question relevant to any proposed future Ambazonian state: What constitutional safeguards should ensure that national security institutions protect the state without becoming a power above the state? A military may defend a republic. But in a constitutional system, the republic must also govern its military.

That requires attention to civilian supremacy, legislative oversight, budgeting, military justice, appointments, command authority, professional standards, accountability for misconduct, and the transition from wartime formations to permanent national institutions. The deeper lesson of September 29, 1789, therefore may not be about weapons at all. It is about institutional seriousness.

The American founders had achieved independence, but victory in war did not by itself create a fully functioning republic. They still had to develop the machinery of government capable of exercising lawful authority, raising revenue, administering laws, managing security, protecting rights, and imposing accountability. The same distinction applies wherever independence is proposed as a political objective.

The question cannot end with: Can a people struggle to establish a country? It must eventually become: Can they build the institutions necessary to govern one? For discussions about Southern Cameroons, that means looking beyond the immediate conflict toward constitutional design, civilian government, professional security institutions, public finance, courts, administration, infrastructure, economic reconstruction, and accountable institutions.

September 29, 1789, reminds us that military history and constitutional history are inseparable. The United States did not merely inherit soldiers. It brought those soldiers within its emerging constitutional order. That may be the most useful lesson from that day for contemporary Ambazonian nation-building discussions: The struggle to establish a country and the discipline required to govern one are not the same task. The first may create an opportunity for sovereignty. The second determines whether institutions can make sovereignty durable.

As Amazon associate this site earns from qualifying purchases

Get books on productive Sovereignty and statecraft in Ambazonia by Martin Mungwa on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Books+By+Martin+Mungwa&crid=V79NRY7JJ30O&sprefix=books+by+martin+mungwa%2Caps%2C543&linkCode=ll2&tag=njokings-20&linkId=1df6be3ffe60c113176538b666800c22&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

Lester Maddox
Guest Contributor
The Independentist News
Oakland, California