Dear JDS:

I speak as a law professor.  I don't know who you had in mind for your rather
sarcastic note. However, I would point out to you that all presidents use
their office to push their agenda and that of their party and their cabinet.
That is what politics is all about, and nothing in the Constitution says
otherwise.

Lincoln used military power because he was putting down a rebellion by a group
of traitors, led in large part by people who had once worn the military
uniforms of their country, but had now joined the army of a putative country
and made war on their former comrades and country.  The Constitution, as you
well know, allows the government of the United States to use military force to
suppression rebellons and insurrections.  Before 1861 U.S. presidents had used
that power to protect slavery and protect southern slaveowners against slave
rebellions and other assaults on their "peculiar institution."  During the
course of putting down the much larger rebellon, officially known as the War
of the Rebellion, President Lincoln used his powers as commander-in-chief to
take valuable war resources (slaves) from those traitors in rebellion against
the United States.

In the spirit of your posting below, I would suggest you read the Constitution
as well. The Constitution clearly gives the government the power to suppress
rebellions.  The president acted under this powers, as did Congress.  The
Emancipation Proclamation was an implementation of his powers as C-in-C, as
well as an executive implementation of authority already given to the
President under the first and second confiscation acts; and they were surely
constitutional as measures necessary to suppress what Congress, the president,
and most citizens of the United States rightly called a "wicked rebellion."

--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, OK  74104-3189

phone 918-631-3706
Fax   918-631-2194
e-mail:   [log in to unmask]


[log in to unmask] wrote:

>         Lincoln's primary obligation was to defend and protect the
> Constitution, not to use the military power of his office to push the
> political agenda of his cabinet.  I assume that as a public school teacher
> you are at least somewhat familiar with the Constitution?  It's an old
> document with a bunch of amendments housed down at the National Archives a
> couple blocks from here.
>
>        I would respectfully suggest that you go over it with your classes
> sometime.  I am surprised it is not an absolute requirement of the
> educational system that students are at least as familiar with it as the
> lives of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Marion Barry.
>
> JDS
>
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