its own, without that
sweeping sovereign authority which in course of time has been acquired
by its parent body, the Parliament of Great Britain?

On this point Lincoln never wavered. From first to last, he was
determined not to admit that Congress had the powers of Parliament. No
sooner had the politicians made out this attitude than their attack
on it began. It did not cease until Lincoln's death. It added a second
constitutional question to the issues of the war. Not only the issue
whether a State had a right to secede, but also the issue of the
President's possession of the war powers of the Constitution. Time and
again the leaders of disaffection in his own party, to say nothing of
the violent Democrats, exhausted their rhetoric denouncing Lincoln's
position. They did not deny themselves the delights of the sneer.
Senator Grimes spoke of a call on the President as an attempt "to
approach the footstool of power enthroned at the other end of the
Avenue."(2) Wade expanded the idea: "We ought to have a committee to
wait on him whenever we send him a bill, to know what his royal pleasure
is with regard to it. . . . We are told that some gentlemen . . . have
been to see the President. Some gentlemen are very fortunate in that
respect. Nobody can see him, it seems, except some privileged gentlemen
who are charged with his constitutional conscience."(3) As Lincoln kept
his doors open to all the world, as no one came and went with greater
freedom than the Chairman of the Committee, the sneer was-what one might
expect of the Committee. Sumner said: "I claim for Congress all that
belongs to any government in the exercise of the rights of war."
Disagreement with him, he treated with unspeakable disdain: "Born in
ignorance and pernicious in consequence, it ought to be received with
hissings of contempt, and just in proportion as it obtains acceptance,
with execration."(4) Henry Wilson declared that, come what might, the
policy of the Administration would be shaped by the two Houses. "I had
rather give a policy to the President of the United States than take a
policy from the President of the United States."(5) Trumbull thundered
against the President's theory as the last word in despotism.(6)

Such is the mental perspective in which to regard the speech of Stevens
of January 22, 1862. With masterly clearness, he put his finger on the
heart of the matter: the exceptional problems of a time of war, problems
that can not be fores