he executive arm of the
government are brought into question."[47] Even after the Civil War a
powerful minority of the Court described the role of President as
Commander in Chief simply as "the command of the forces and the conduct
of campaigns."[48]

THE PRIZE CASES

The basis for a broader conception was laid in certain early acts of
Congress authorizing the President to employ military force in the
execution of the laws.[49] In his famous message to Congress of July 4,
1861,[50] Lincoln advanced the claim that the "war power" was his for
the purpose of suppressing rebellion; and in the Prize Cases[51] of
1863, a sharply divided Court sustained this theory. The immediate issue
of the case was the validity of the blockade which the President,
following the attack on Fort Sumter, had proclaimed of the Southern
ports.[52] The argument was advanced that a blockade to be valid must be
an incident of a "public war" validly declared, and that only Congress
could, by virtue of its power "to declare war," constitutionally impart
to a military situation this character and scope. Speaking for the
majority of the Court, Justice Grier answered: "If a war be made by
invasion of a foreign nation, the President is not only authorized but
bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate the war, but is
bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any special
legislative authority. And whether the hostile party be a foreign
invader, or States organized in rebellion, it is none the less a war,
although the declaration of it be '_unilateral_.' Lord Stowell (1
Dodson, 247) observes, 'It is not the less a war on _that account_, for
war may exist without a declaration on either side. It is so laid down
by the best writers on the law of nations. A declaration of war by one
country only is not a mere challenge to be accepted or refused at
pleasure by the other.' The battles of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma
had been fought before the passage of the act of Congress of May 13,
1846, which recognized '_a state of war as existing by the act of the
Republic of Mexico_.' This act not only provided for the future
prosecution of the war, but was itself a vindication and ratification of
the Act of the President in accepting the challenge without a previous
formal declaration of war by Congress. This greatest of civil wars was
not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or
local unorganized insurrections. However