The role of the President in War

Much has been made about "King George" and his secret programs, his secret plans to invade our privacy and his non-so-secret conspiracy to enrich his oil buddies (and Halliburton) while grinding the faces of the poor.

For the hysterics among us, it may be useful to remind ourselves how previous Presidents dealt with war - Presidents such as Old Abe:

Lincoln's primary aim as commander-in-chief was of course the preservation of the Union -- the restoration of democracy and the rule of law among the seceding states. He meant to demonstrate that "among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that those who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost." Indeed, as Daniel Farber recalls in Lincoln's Constitution, Lincoln originally called up the militia in the name of the rule of law because "the laws of the United States have been for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed" by "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings."

In subduing the Confederacy, Lincoln took his bearings by his constitutional duty to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Though this is the subject for another day, it should be noted that, given the Supreme Court's handiwork in the Dred Scott case, he was not an advocate of judicial supremacy. As president and commander-in-chief, he suspended habeas corpus, used martial law, instituted military trials, and exercised power to the limits of his constitutional authority in a manner that suggests the loose nature of those limits when confronted by necessity. Yet Lincoln preserved the rule of law and became the Great Liberator.

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