ABSTRACT
The idea that in war time Congress sits back while the President takes charge of national affairs, both civil and military, as a kind of general dictator has become so familiar since 1941 that we tend to take it for granted as a constitutional axiom. Actually, no one ever heard of the “war power” or “war powers” of the President until the Civil War. Even in the Civil War, Lincoln discovered that he possessed a “war power” only because, it being a domestic conflict, his constitutional duty “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed” was brought into coincidence with his constitutional role as Commander in Chief.
