War Powers In History

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: War Powers In History
From:    "Atkinson, Robert" <rca53 () columbia edu>
Date:    Tue, December 27, 2005 3:04 pm
To:      dave () farber net
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Dave:



The January 2006 issue of Smithsonian magazine has an article by Doris
Kearns Goodwin about the origins of the Emancipation Proclamation.  It is
relevant to the current debate over the NSA interceptions as it
illustrates how one provision in the Constitution (in this case Art. IV,
Sec. 2 which explicitly protected slavery in states that allowed it) was
overridden by the President's "war powers" during a time of war.



> From the excerpt on the magazine's website
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues06/jan06/lincoln.html :



While he [Lincoln] concurred with the most passionate abolitionists that
slavery was "a moral, a social and a political wrong," as president, he
felt he could not ignore the constitutional protection of the
institution where it already existed.



Daily reports from the battlefields illuminated the innumerable uses to
which slaves were put by the Confederacy. ... Seen in this light,
emancipation could be considered a military necessity-a legitimate
exercise of the president's constitutional war powers.



The slaves held in the loyal border states were not emancipated until the
adoption of the 13th Amendment because there was no military
justification for doing so.



Is President Bush's order to the NSA constitutionally different from
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation?  I'd be interested in
hearing some opinions on that.



Bob




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