The Constitution had provided for such an emergency in a general way by making the President the head "of the militia of the several states when called into the actual service of the United States." Here was opportunity in working out the details for the individualists to protect themselves against the unjust use of the militia by restricting the circumstances under which it could be called into the actual service of the Federal Government. Unfortunately for them, measures for the proper defence of the frontier were necessary from the beginning of the new Government. Since the frontier lay so largely in the United States territories, its defence belonged to that authority and not to any State. Under certain limits of time and distance, the President had been authorised in various laws to employ State militia on the frontier. The Secretary of War eventually drew up a plan for organising uniformly the militia of the States into a national defence, believing, as he said, that "an energetic militia is to be regarded as the capital security of a free republic, and not a standing army, forming a distinct class in the community." In drafting the militia law of 1792, in accord with the recommendations of Knox, the President was authorised to call out the militia of any State "whenever the laws of the United States should be opposed by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings." This efficient clause was productive of a prolonged debate in each branch and a conference between the two. Its opponents made various efforts to substitute the Legislature of a State as the agency for calling out the militia, to require a previous notice to the President from a justice that the laws could not be enforced, and to have a session of Congress intervene before the President could march the militia of one State into another. The fear of giving the central power an excuse for maintaining a standing army had led the framers of the Constitution to incorporate a clause placing the militia at national service only for the purpose of executing its laws, suppressing insurrection, and repelling invasion. Of these emergencies, Congress was to be the judge. Should the dangerous authority now be given over to the Executive? The long intermissions between sessions of Congress made such delegating imperative. The Shays rebellion had left its lesson. Yet, according to one speaker, the measure seemed to suppose that only the General Government possessed the power to suppress insurrections, whereas the States individually certainly possessed this power and would execute it. Another thought it an insult to the majesty of the people to hold out the idea that it may be necessary to execute the laws at the point of the bayonet. "If an old woman," cried a disgusted member of the minority, "was to strike an excise officer with a broomstick, forsooth the military is to be called out to suppress an insurrection."