"War after 1789 was radically different from what it had been during the age of limited warfare. Restraints on warfare began eroding during the American Revolution, and the French Revolution completely washed them away. Americans reintroduced ideology into warfare, fought for the unlimited goal of independence, and mobilized citizen-soldiers rather than professionals. In the spring of 1783, Washington summarized the drastic implications of these changes. "It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system," he wrote, "that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a free Government, owes not only a proportion of his prosperity, but even his personal service to the defense of it." To protect the nation, "the Total strength of the Country might be called forth." Mass citizen-soldier armies wold be motivated by patriotic zeal as they fought for freedom, equality, and other abstract ideological values."
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