Sallow
The Big Bad Wolf.
Found this interesting piece in the New York Times, yesterday..
In this dispute, the reformers can take inspiration from a surprising quarter: the founders. From the start of the Republic, they aimed to create what the historian Michael Tate called a multipurpose army, designed for a wide variety of functions beyond combat. Despite the small size of the regular Army, which was capped at 6,000 men in 1821, and despite the miserly pay that led a foreign observer to wonder who would volunteer to be shot at for one shilling a day, the early military performed an essential role in forging the young America.
Troops cut down trees and farmed. They built schools, hospitals and, by 1830, 1,900 miles of roads. They dug canals, erected bridges and dredged harbors. Soldiers constructed everything from the Minots Ledge lighthouse on the Massachusetts shore to the Washington Aqueduct, which provides the capitals water. In 1820, Col. Zachary Taylor, the future president, commented, The ax, pick, saw and trowel has become more the implement of the American soldier than the cannon, musket or sword.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/o...imes archives opinion November 11 army&st=cse