Madison: Federalist No. 46, on the makeup of the militia:

[Panich52]

1. Jefferson may be better exemplar. He didn't like standing armies.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army”

A standing army has always been used by despots to enforce their rule and to keep their people under subjection.

From US Army Center of Military History: Hamiltonians & Jeffersonians
http://www.history.army.mil/books/RevWar/ss/ch5.htm

The size of the Army during the Quasi-War soon became a sensitive political issue. The Jeffersonians were convinced that France was not about to fight in North America, and in the same sense used by the colonists in the decade before the Revolution, they came to consider the underutilized regulars a "standing army." They feared that Hamilton and his allies planned to use it to crush domestic opposition. At each step of the expansion process they raised this issue.

Between 1812 and 1815 the American military system, created by the Soldier-Statesmen of the Revolutionary generation and in part still commanded by veterans of the War for Independence, was tested again. If the war did not noticeably enhance the international reputation of America's military forces, it nevertheless proved them sufficient to the task of stalemating a powerful enemy. In a number of key engagements, the nation watched able young generals, whose careers would continue well into the nation's coming of age, assume the mantle of leadership from the aging veterans of the Revolution. The youthful Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans, for example, mirrored that of Samuel Smith of Revolutionary War renown in the successful repulse of the British before Baltimore just months before. Both proved once again that regulars and militia could be effectively combined in combat, just as they had been at Cowpens, when they were employed in a team effort that did not require either to carry out tasks alien to its own capabilities. Their achievements in this "second War for Independence" demonstrated that the Founding Fathers, ever suspicious of standing armies in the European sense, had created a workable alternative for the new nation.

Digital History:
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=3&psid=169

Deep substantive and ideological issues divided the two parties. Federalists feared that Jefferson would reverse all the accomplishments of the preceding 12 years. A Republican president, they thought, would overthrow the Constitution by returning power to the states, dismantling the army and navy, and overturning Hamilton's financial system. The Republicans charged that the Federalists, by creating a large standing army, imposing heavy taxes, and using federal troops and the federal courts to suppress dissent, had shown contempt for the liberties of the American people.

More TJ:

"I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for... protection against standing armies." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:387

"The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:184

"In this country, [a draught from the militia] ever was the most unpopular and impracticable thing that could be attempted. Our people, even under the monarchical government, had learnt to consider it as the last of all oppressions." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1777. ME 4:286, Papers 2:18

"The breaking men to military discipline is breaking their spirits to principles of passive obedience." --Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 1788. ME 7:19

"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important, but especially so at a moment when rights the most essential to our welfare have been violated." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1803. ME 10:365

"It is more a subject of joy that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies. But it proves more forcibly the necessity of obliging every citizen to be a soldier; this was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free State. Where there is no oppression there can be no pauper hirelings." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1813. ME 13:261

"I think the truth must now be obvious that our people are too happy at home to enter into regular service, and that we cannot be defended but by making every citizen a soldier, ... -- Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1814.

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TJ did come to believe in conscription, of sorts. But while 18-26 yr olds were to be trained, they were to only be called when needed f/ nat'l defense but were always ready against despotism. How would that have been possible if they did not hold their own arms?

And so I go back to the 1st TJ quote I listed....

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