Introduction John V. Denson

There are already many books analyzing the American presidency that unique political institution created by our eighteenth-century Founders. Two of the most popular books on this subject are The Imperial Presidency, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,[1] and The American Presidency, by Forrest McDonald.[2] These books are well-researched, and both authors are competent scholars who express their ideas through excellent prose. So why another book on this subject? The main reason is to express various viewpoints in the long tradition of classical liberalism which are not contained in any other books on the presidency with which I am familiar. Schlesinger essentially states the viewpoint of modern liberals, and McDonald states basically that of the conservatives. Also, the viewpoints expressed in this volume are very different from the perspectives of most of the professional historians whose polls are studied in the first essay herein by professors Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway. In every published poll taken of selected groups of professional historians since 1948, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt have been rated as two of the three “greatest,” compared with the judgment expressed in this book which rates them as the two “worst” presidents.[3] Therefore, we need to begin with an explanation of the term classical liberalism and distinguish it from conservatism and modern liberalism.

Ralph Raico, a classical liberal and a professional historian who has an excellent chapter on President Truman in this volume, has correctly stated that, “Classical liberalism—or simply liberalism, as it was called until around the turn of the century—is the signature political philosophy of Western civilization.”[4] He is referring to the political philosophy of a limited, constitutional government which follows an economic policy of the free market and a foreign policy of noninterventionism, all ideas which were very popular and influential in America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is not praising the philosophy of big government associated with the term “liberal—” which today signifies a belief in a central government designed to promote egalitarianism, with a regulated, highly taxed economy and an interventionist foreign policy appropriately described, in my opinion, as “globaloney.” These modern liberals, who were calling themselves “progressives” or “socialists” in the early part of the twentieth century, later adopted the term “liberal” for the same reasons that the American Whig Party adopted the venerable term “Whig” from the British in the nineteenth century. American Whigs believed in big government and the British Whigs believed in limited government. The adoption of the terms “liberal” and “Whig” were done to confuse the American people about the true intentions of the advocates of big government. Felix Morley described this shell game of labels in 1951 as follows:

Those who urge the progressive intervention of government in business were once accurately and dispassionately known as “Socialists.” But most American Socialists now describe themselves as “liberals,” although that designation for a believer in State planning is directly opposite to the historic meaning of the word. There is no doubt that this type of semantic duplicity, or double-talk, has been politically influential.[5]

However, today the political label “liberal” has become such an opprobrious word of political baggage to a significant number of the general public that many modern liberals have retreated to their previous label of “progressives.” The modern liberal wants to bring about his plan of the welfare state through the democratic process, or “social democracy,” a term born during the French Revolution. The egalitarian ideas of the French Revolution inspired the socialist movement in the nineteenth century, which filtered into the American political system at the end of that century through the “progressive” movement. As progressives became the dominant political force in the early part of the twentieth century they changed their label to “liberals.”[6]

The word “classical” is defined by the dictionary as “not new and experimental; as, classical political science.”[7] In an excellent recent book entitled Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal, the British political philosopher David Conway points out that the term “liberalism,” as used today to describe a political philosophy, must be further defined as either modern liberalism or classical liberalism. He points out that these terms have an opposite meaning, primarily as they relate to the size, power, and purpose of the central government. This is especially true in regard to the role of government as it relates to the economy.[8] We also learn from Conway’s book, and as indicated in its subtitle, that classical liberalism is an “unvanquished ideal” which has been almost completely discarded in the twentieth century, primarily as a result of World War I.

Conway traces the historical development of classical liberalism back as far as the seventeenth century, although its roots can actually be traced to ancient Greece, and he states,

After falling into almost complete intellectual disrepute toward the end of the nineteenth century classical liberalism was rescued from oblivion and revived in the twentieth century by such notable thinkers as Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek.[9]

Later, Conway comments on the importance of this philosophy:

No society has ever fully exemplified that form which classical liberals maintain is best. Classical-liberal ideas greatly influenced the founding fathers of the U.S.A. in their design of its constitution. They also inspired much reform in Britain in the nineteenth century. However, today, neither society comes close to being a liberal polity as classical liberals conceive of one. Both contain far too much legislation and regulation restrictive of the liberty of members.[10]

Conway reviews the ideas of some of the principal advocates of classical liberalism, such as John Locke in the seventeenth century, Adam Smith and David Hume in the eighteenth century, and John Stuart Mill in the nineteenth century.

Ludwig von Mises, one of the two most prominent classical liberals identified by Conway in the twentieth century, is mainly known today as an economist, but he expressed many of his political ideas in 1927 in a book entitled Liberalism. He had to change the title in subsequent editions to distinguish classical liberalism from the term “liberal” that is used today. The title of a later edition of the same book was Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition.[11] The other classical liberal identified by Conway, Friedrich A. Hayek, who is also known mainly as an economist, was a student of Mises and attended his famous seminars presented in Vienna. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1974, though his views on classical liberalism can be seen in his influential books, The Road to Serfdom and The Constitution of Liberty.

At the probable risk of justified criticism for oversimplification, I will give a brief statement of the ideas and differences of the three main political philosophies which are important for readers of this book. Probably the main issue which distinguishes classical liberalism from both modern liberalism and conservatism is the recognition by the classical liberal that a citizen’s own government is more likely to be a threat to his liberty than any foreign government or domestic criminal.[12] Therefore, the classical liberal is sensitive to the issue of big government and wants it to be limited to a very narrow range of powers to which it is best suited and otherwise restrained by a constitution from violating the citizens’ rights. Therefore, the issue of “liberty versus power” is the essential reference point for the classical liberal regarding government.[13] The American Founding Fathers were very sensitive to this issue of their own government taking away their freedom because of their experience as subjects of the British Empire. They primarily designed the American government through the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to protect citizens from their own central or federal government by preventing the concentration of too much power into the hands of that government and by letting most of the political power remain with the States and the people. This was made explicit in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

On the other hand, modern liberals and conservatives both want a larger, more powerful federal government, but each wants this for different purposes. The modern liberals want a big government to regulate the economy and for the egalitarian purposes of the welfare state, so that tax money can be redistributed by central planners and bureaucrats to various groups. Conservatives want a large and powerful government, although usually not as big as the modern liberals, primarily for “national defense,” including the CIA, and for “law and order,” including the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Also, conservatives believe that government should be in partnership with business and grant it certain favors such as subsidies, tariffs, and protection for its economic interests, both at home and abroad.

Conservatives believe in private enterprise, but classical liberals believe in free enterprise with no partnership or help from the federal government and with virtually no controls or regulations by the federal government over the economy. Both modern liberals and conservatives supported big government during the cold war to fight communism, and they have continued their support in recent times to allow America to become the world’s policeman. Classical liberalism believes in free-market global trade but also believes that business and banking interests should engage in foreign trade at their own risk without government aid and that America should not be the world’s policeman. This is the classical-liberal idea of a noninterventionist foreign policy.

As Conway states, classical liberalism had a dominant influence at the time of the formation of the American government. Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson is usually identified as the person most representative of classical liberalism and is most often quoted for his belief “That government governs best which governs the least.”[14] Jefferson applied this general idea specifically to the American government: “The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”[15] Alexander Hamilton, among the Founders, is usually designated as the best representative of conservatism. Christopher Hollis, in his excellent work on American history, summarizes the Jefferson-Hamilton conflict as follows:

Hamilton was content to support the Constitution because he was confident that, once a central government was established, it would be able at each crisis, or pretended crisis, to filch from the States such powers as might seem to it convenient. In this he has been proved disastrously right. Jefferson, also foreseeing the danger, thought to guard the liberty of the individual by the addition to the Constitution of a series of Amendments [the first Ten Amendments, known as the Bill of Rights]. Many others doubted and were induced to support ratification only by the argument that there could be no danger in giving the Constitution a trial, since any state could always secede again if it wished to do so. What a sorry joke have their descendants made of poor Jefferson and his friends. How Alexander Hamilton must grin from his grave![16]

Both Jefferson and Hamilton served in the first cabinet of President George Washington. Washington is not usually remembered as an intellectual, and he probably favored more of Hamilton’s views than Jefferson’s concerning the size and power of the federal government. Clearly he did so in regard to the issue of central banking. Nevertheless, Washington was definitely influenced by the classical-liberal ideas which pervaded the eighteenth century and expressed one of the principal classical-liberal viewpoints about government: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”[17] Ludwig von Mises went into more detail in describing the danger of government in general, or “the state,” by expressing the following classical-liberal idea in his excellent book on politics entitled Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War:

The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave. . . .

The state is, if properly administered, the foundation of society, of human cooperation and civilization. It is the most beneficial and most useful instrument in the endeavors of man to promote human happiness and welfare. But it is a tool and a means only, not the ultimate goal. It is not God. It is simply compulsion and coercion; it is the police power. . . .

The state is a human institution, not a super human being. He who says “state” means coercion and compulsion.

He who says: There should be a law concerning this matter, means: The armed men of government should force people to do what they do not want to do, or not to do what they like.

. . . The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster. . . .

The essential characteristic features of state and government do not depend on their particular structure and constitution. They are present both in despotic and in democratic governments. Democracy too is not divine. We shall later deal with the benefits that society derives from democratic government.

But great as these advantages are, it should never be forgotten that majorities are no less exposed to error and frustration than kings and dictators. That a fact is deemed true by the majority does not prove its truth. That a policy is deemed expedient by the majority does not prove its expediency. The individuals who form the majority are not gods, and their joint conclusions are not necessarily godlike.[18]

The danger of democracy to liberty was an important point considered by the American framers, who were as concerned about the dangers to liberty from the majority as from a monarchy. They often referred to the danger of “King Numbers” or “Mobocracy” as a severe threat to liberty, and, therefore, they designed the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, to protect citizens’ rights from majority rule. Today, most conservatives and modern liberals speak of “protecting democracy” at home or “spreading democracy” abroad, but rarely do they speak of “protecting liberty” or “spreading liberty.” As pointed out by Mises, democracy does not necessarily promote liberty and it may even become despotic to a substantial minority.

A couple of aphorisms serve to describe the general philosophy of classical liberalism, which believes in trying to solve social and economic problems primarily through private, voluntary action and in the market economy rather than turning to government. One of these was often expressed by President Ronald Reagan during his campaigns, but, unfortunately, he did not—or was not allowed to—put the idea into practice during either of his two administrations. His campaign slogan was “Government is not the answer, it is the problem.” Another which captures the essence of classical liberalism was made by an obscure lyric poet in Germany who died in 1843. He stated, “What has made the State a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.”[19]

There have been many reforms, especially in the twentieth century, beginning with the “progressives” and coming up to the modern liberals today who want specific and good social programs. To accomplish their ends, they pass laws to force the program onto everyone and to force all of the taxpayers to pay for it. It is this constant increase in taxation and the power of government in order to create “good” government programs that has been one of the major causes of government becoming a “Leviathan,” which then becomes a threat to the liberty of all the citizens.

As noted earlier, the ideas of conservatism and classical liberalism were dominant in American politics at the beginning of the Republic. The battle over what the proper role and power of the federal government should be continued up until the time of the American Civil War. Those individuals who controlled the American government during and at the end of the Civil War believed in a strong central government with a high or protective tariff, which amounted to a partnership between big business and big government. These were the basic ideas of Alexander Hamilton and conservatism at that time. The ideas of Thomas Jefferson and of limited government and states’ rights were largely discarded after this war.

One of the principal goals and great achievements of classical liberalism was the abolition of slavery—which occurred throughout Western civilization in the nineteenth century—without war being necessary—except for the revolt in Haiti—despite the fact that slavery had been a significant, well-accepted, worldwide institution for thousands of years. The great tragedy for classical liberalism, and for American political thought, was that the ideas of limited government and states’ rights, which were the classical-liberal ideas adopted by the South, became intertwined with the idea of slavery, which classical liberalism opposed. Even though the Civil War was not waged by the North for the purpose of the abolition of slavery, as will be shown in my essay on Lincoln herein, slavery was abolished after the war through the Thirteenth Amendment. However, the war also had the unfortunate effect of destroying the classical-liberal ideas of states’ rights and limited government at the same time because they were all advocated by the South. Big government advocates stated, then and now, that states’ rights and slavery went hand in hand. Big government advocates, even today, often claim that the abolition of slavery was their great achievement in spite of the fact that big government and slavery had been joined together for many centuries and were the twin evils classical liberalism always opposed.

Immediately after the Civil War, the famous historian of liberty, Lord Acton, wrote to General Robert E. Lee and asked what the result of the Civil War was in Lee’s opinion. Lee replied in a letter dated December 15, 1866, and, in part, stated:

[T]he consolidation of the states into one vast republic, [is] sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home . . . [and] will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those [governments] that have preceded it.[20]

At the end of the nineteenth century in America the political battle was no longer between classical liberalism and conservatism. It was between two advocates of big government, but for different purposes: one was conservatism, which favored big government and a partnership with big business, and the other was “progressivism,” which wanted big government to regulate or control the economy and move toward egalitarianism and the welfare state.[21]

Turning now to the American presidency as viewed by classical liberals, one of my favorite presidents is not covered in this book. He was the first president after the Civil War who attempted to revive the ideas of Jefferson and classical liberalism; unfortunately, however, he was also the last. Grover Cleveland, in my opinion, is the last good president from a classical-liberal perspective, and a few illustrations of his actions while in office will show that classical liberalism does not advocate a “do-nothing” president or one that is weak. Classical liberalism believes that the president should use his power to promote and protect individual liberty rather than to increase the power of the federal government. Cleveland stood for sound money and the gold standard,[22] and he was opposed to the protective tariff.[23] He advocated the increased respect and sovereignty of the States as a check and balance on the power of the central government.[24] Cleveland generally supported the ideas of a limited federal government and the strict construction of the Constitution, a free-market economy, and the separation of banking from the government.[25]

Two good examples of Grover Cleveland acting as a strong president, trying to protect individual liberty rather than promoting power in the federal government, will illustrate my point. The first relates to a domestic issue regarding a rather meager attempt by Congress to create a welfare system—which Cleveland fought because of his belief that the federal government should not be involved in any welfare program, not only because it increased the power of the federal government, but also because it decreased the liberty and the moral character of the people who might become dependent upon it. This political principle in no way meant he was opposed to private charity, which of course he supported. Cleveland used the power of the presidency to veto a federal welfare program of only $10,000 for drought relief in Texas, and he stated:

I do not believe that the power and duty of the general Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering. . . . A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people. . . . Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our National character.[26]

Garet Garrett notes that Cleveland’s veto was: “[O]ne way of saying a hard truth that was implicit in the American way of thinking, namely, that when people support the government they control government, but when the government supports the people it will control them.”[27] Modern liberalism completely supports government welfare as a principle, and although most conservatives condone the practice, they mainly oppose the amount of tax money for the program and want it to be smaller, rather than opposing the principle of government welfare altogether.

The second example of Cleveland’s use of presidential power to promote liberty was his restraint on Congress in regard to the declaration of war which prevented the Spanish-American War during his presidency Louis Fisher, in his excellent book on the presidential war power, relates the following account of President Cleveland’s confrontation with several congressmen:

Some members of Congress itched for war. An associate of President Cleveland was once present when a delegation from Congress arrived at the White House to announce, “We have about decided to declare war against Spain over the Cuban question. Conditions are intolerable.” Cleveland responded bluntly, “There will be no war with Spain over Cuba while I am President.” A member of Congress protested that the Constitution gave Congress the right to declare war, but Cleveland countered by saying that the Constitution also made him Commander in Chief and “I will not mobilize the army.” Cleveland said that the United States could buy Cuba from Spain for $100 million, whereas a war “will cost vastly more than that and will entail another long list of pensioners. It will be an outrage to declare war.” This standoff raises the intriguing possibility that a President, presented with a declaration of war from Congress, could veto it on the ground that intelligence obtained from diplomatic sources demonstrated that war was unnecessary. In such situations, one would assume that this information would be shared with Congress and derail efforts to declare war.[28]

However, Congress later had a willing president to go along with their efforts to abandon the ideas of the Founders, especially George Washington’s ideas in his famous Farewell Address wherein he promoted a noninterventionist foreign policy. It was President McKinley, who led America into its first imperialistic war by using the lie that the battleship USS Maine was sunk by the Spanish.[29] America made its tragic mistake of forgetting its heritage of liberty and by seeking power with the conquest of the Philippines in Asia. The new foreign policy of imperialism was thus born in America.

I had a discussion with Jeffrey Hummel regarding his selection of Van Buren as the best example of a good classical-liberal president, and I asked him if he had considered Grover Cleveland. He stated that while he ranked him very high in most respects, he did not rate him above Van Buren because of Cleveland’s use of federal troops to break up the Pullman strike. This action by Cleveland certainly increased the power of the central government over the States. One of his biographers, Richard E. Welch, Jr., sums up this mistake by Cleveland, who severely violated one of the main principles of federalism that was inherent in the Constitution, as it was originally conceived:

Cleveland was not the first American president to send federal troops to maintain law and order during a railroad strike; Hayes had done so during the “Great Strike” of 1877. Cleveland was, however, the first president to do so at his own initiative and not at the application of a state governor. Not only did the governor of Illinois not request the dispatch of federal troops, he objected publicly and often. Cleveland insisted that under Section 5298 of the Revised Statutes, he possessed the unrestricted authority to dispatch federal troops wherever there was a threat to life and property. [Governor] Altgeld insisted that police powers were reserved exclusively for the states; in time of peace, federal troops could only intervene if invited to do so by a state legislature or governor. Altgeld wrote angry letters to the president and received equally angry replies. Cleveland argued that the troops had been sent only after he had received conclusive evidence from the judicial officers of the United States “that the process of the Federal courts could not be executed through the ordinary means, and upon competent proof that the conspiracies existed against commerce between the States.”[30]

Welch further elaborates on this use of federal troops by Cleveland and his evolving stance regarding the authority of the president:

For a student of the American presidency, the most interesting feature of Cleveland’s actions during the Pullman strike is the witness they offer to his evolving conception of presidential authority. In the campaign of 1884, Cleveland had run on a Democratic platform calling for renewed respect for the rights and sovereignty of the individual states, and for many years thereafter he had given periodic warning against undue centralization of power in the federal government. In 1894 he claimed for the chief executive of the national government the authority to supersede the state of Illinois as the protector of law and order within its boundaries. Brushing aside the objections of Governor Altgeld, Cleveland assumed the police powers traditionally reserved to state and local governments as he authorized the use of federal military power in a labor-management dispute. Like his hero Andrew Jackson, Cleveland could simultaneously speak against the centralization of power in the federal government and expand the power of the federal executive. Cleveland’s interpretation of the traditions of the Democratic Party was, at least, flexible. He quoted Jefferson when denouncing federal interference in local elections, but he acted like Jackson when he overrode Governor Altgeld and claimed supremacy for the federal government and its chief executive during the Chicago railroad strike.[31]

I think Jeffrey Hummel is probably right to downgrade Cleveland’s status because of his action in the Pullman strike, but I want to relate another example about Grover Cleveland which shows him to be a person of sound political principles rather than simply a person loyal to his political party regardless of its principles. This occurred in the presidential election in 1896, when Cleveland refused to vote for William Jennings Bryan, who was the Democratic Party nominee, and he also refused to vote for William McKinley, who was the Republican nominee. Instead he voted for a third-party candidate, Senator John M. Palmer. His biographer, Welch, states:

Here perhaps, he could be indicted for party recusancy, if not treason. Cleveland, however, believed that the Democratic Party under Bryan was no longer the party of Jefferson and Jackson. The Bryan Democrats were Populists, and the Gold Democrats who were running as a third party were the true heirs of the Founding Fathers of Democracy.[32]

There is still much to admire about President Cleveland from a classical-liberal viewpoint.

David Conway’s book, as mentioned earlier, states that classical liberalism is the “unvanquished ideal.” It is true that these ideas have never been proven wrong or defeated but were simply discarded after the American Civil War. With the exception of the two terms of Grover Cleveland, classical liberalism never again became a major influence in American politics, in my opinion.[33] Some might argue that the administrations of Presidents Harding and Coolidge demonstrate a rebirth of classical liberalism, but I question this. They certainly did not seem to have the commitment to classical liberalism that Cleveland did, and they were greatly affected by the results of President Wilson’s war and his despotic domestic policy during the war confirming Robert E. Lee’s prediction that the consolidated federal government would become “aggressive abroad and despotic at home.” The successive Harding and Coolidge administrations attempted to return America to “normalcy” after the war was over, but while they both stood for the principle of reducing government spending, as well as the excessive rates of Wilson’s income tax, they were still “good” Republicans who advocated a higher protective tariff to help business. They also were caught up in the ideas of the “Progressive Era” and supported much government regulation of industry, like the radio, so long as government also remained in a partnership with industry.[34]

My study of constitutional history indicates that the Founders intended for the legislative branch of Congress, composed of both the House and Senate, to be the dominant branch of the federal government, which was then very limited in scope and power. Today the executive has become, by far, the dominant branch of government, even to the point that it is the main threat to the liberty and freedom of American citizens. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a modern liberal, admits and comments on this fact as follows:

The Imperial Presidency was essentially the creation of foreign policy. A combination of doctrines and emotions—belief in permanent and universal crisis, fear of communism, faith in the duty, and the right of the United States to intervene swiftly in every part of the world—had brought about the unprecedented centralization of decisions over war and peace in the Presidency. With this came an unprecedented exclusion of the rest of the executive branch, of Congress, of the press and of public opinion in general from these decisions. Prolonged war in Vietnam strengthened the tendencies toward both centralization and exclusion. So the imperial Presidency grew at the expense of the constitutional order. Like the cowbird, it hatched its own eggs and pushed the others out of the nest. And, as it overwhelmed the traditional separation of powers in foreign affairs, it began to aspire toward an equivalent centralization of power in the domestic polity.

We saw in the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal that extraordinary power flowing into the Presidency to meet domestic problems by no means enlarged presidential authority in foreign affairs. But we also saw in the case of FDR and the Second World War and Harry S. Truman and the steel seizure that extraordinary power flowing into the Presidency to meet international problems could easily encourage Presidents to extend their unilateral claims at home.[35]

Schlesinger continues:

The imperial Presidency, born in the 1940s and 1950s to save the outer world from perdition, thus began in the 1960s and 1970s to find nurture at home. Foreign policy had given the President the command of peace and war. Now the decay of the parties left him in command of the political scene, and the Keynesian revelation placed him in command of the economy. At this extraordinary historical moment, when foreign and domestic lines of force converged, much depended on whether the occupant of the White House was moved to ride the new tendencies of power or to resist them.[36]

Of course, we know that all the occupants of the White House after Franklin Roosevelt rode this vast presidential power over foreign and domestic matters, although at different paces, rather than resisting it.

Another competent observer of this phenomenon of the shift of power to the presidency during the Franklin Roosevelt era is Dean E. Blythe Stason of the University of Michigan Law School, who stated that the years immediately prior to and during World War II caused a “shift in constitutional dominance over the affairs of the nation from the legislative and judicial supremacy of bygone years to the ascendancy of the executive branch of government.”[37] Constitutional scholar E.S. Corwin agrees with Schlesinger and Stason that presidential power was greatly increased by war, but he traces the origin of the dangerous “war powers” doctrine back to President Lincoln, who drastically increased the powers of his office and the federal government in general during the Civil War. Corwin states:

The sudden emergence of the “Commander-in-Chief” clause as one of the most highly charged provisions of the Constitution occurred almost overnight in consequence of Lincoln’s wedding it to the clause that makes it the duty of the President “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” From these two clauses thus united, Lincoln proceeded to derive what he termed the “war power,” to justify the series of extraordinary measures that he took in the interval between the fall of Fort Sumter and the convening of Congress in the special session on July 4, 1861.[38]

Another knowledgeable observer of the phenomenon of the increased powers of the federal government, and especially the power of the presidency because of war, all at the expense of liberty, was Charles Evans Hughes.[39] As a result of World War I, and on June 21, 1920, Hughes expressed his fear for the future of the country with the following words: “We may well wonder in view of the precedents now established whether constitutional government as hitherto maintained in this Republic could survive another great war even victoriously waged.”[40]

Another dangerous expansion of the power of the presidency is commented upon by Dean Blythe Stason. He shows that the executive branch received vastly increased powers through the regulatory legislation of the administrative bodies to which Congress unconstitutionally delegated its lawmaking powers. He states:

[H]ow far can we continue to progress in the direction of conferring upon administrative officials more and more virtually unreviewable discretionary power over the lives and activities of men without finally reaching a state of absolutism that can no longer be called a liberal democracy.[41]

He continues by stating that:

[W]e are confronted by the uncomfortable fact that the experience of history has not yet shown us how constitutional democratic institutions can be preserved in the presence and under the control of ever-increasing administrative discretion.[42]

The process of the general increase in the power of the federal government from the Civil War to the present is a good demonstration of the “ratchet effect” made famous in Robert Higgs’s excellent book Crisis and Leviathan. In the Civil War, Lincoln vastly increased the power of the presidency, and after his death Congress reacted and tried to assert its supremacy. Finally, the Supreme Court stepped in to assert its power over Congress and the presidency The McKinley and Wilson administrations then reacted on behalf of the presidency through the “war powers” established by Lincoln and asserted the supremacy again of the presidency. The net effect of the three branches jockeying for positions of power, which has continued throughout the remainder of the twentieth century, has increased the power of the federal government in general. However, as Schlesinger stated, the “Imperial Presidency” is the main problem today and it was created primarily by Franklin Roosevelt. The Constitution, as written by our Founders, is now in shreds and all but forgotten. No longer do presidents go to Congress to ask for a declaration of war. They simply send troops where and when they please throughout the world. Rarely does the Supreme Court hold acts of Congress unconstitutional because they cannot find in the Constitution where Congress has been given specific authority to legislate. Congress simply does what it wants and the Supreme Court turns its head. The Supreme Court no longer merely interprets the law, it makes laws, a power granted in the Constitution only to Congress.

It is because of this vast increase in the power of the presidency to its present “imperial” status that the Mises Institute decided to hold a conference at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia, to study this threat to our liberty. The Mises Institute was formed in 1982 by Lew Rockwell to promote the ideas of Ludwig von Mises, which fit comfortably within the long tradition of classical liberalism and the ideas of the American Founding Fathers. If America is ever to regain its greatness and again become the best example of individual freedom and liberty in the world, as envisioned by our Founders, we must investigate how, where, and when we abandoned those ideas. The conference and this book have attempted to do this. The chapters on the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Johnson and the Jacksonian era were not part of the conference but were vital to the scope and role of the present-day “imperial presidency.” Jefferson was the first classical-liberal president, and while Andrew Johnson was not a classical liberal, he was a Jacksonian Democrat who opposed a strong centralized government. During Johnson’s administration, immediately following that of Lincoln, he took a courageous stand against a runaway Congress which sought to impose on the South the most aggressive and dictatorial government in American history.

The chapters in this volume are arranged generally in the chronological order of the presidents they discuss. The first, by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway, sets the stage for all of the other chapters and shows the ratings by the professional historians, and other polls, which differ greatly from the assessment of the presidents made by the classical-liberal viewpoint of the authors herein. Vedder and Gallaway attempted to rate the presidents through an objective standard by determining the growth of the central government during their respective terms since the size and power of the central government is a key factor for classical liberals. While this objective standard is useful, it certainly has its problems, as Vedder and Gallaway admit, since it rates Andrew Johnson and Harry Truman as two of the best. This result follows mainly because Johnson and Truman followed presidents who greatly expanded the federal government, and therefore the Johnson and Truman administrations looked very good by comparison as they both attempted to reduce, in some fashion, the size and power of the federal government. This was especially true of Andrew Johnson, as Scott Trask’s chapter demonstrates. However, as Ralph Raico points out later, Harry Truman certainly is not rated highly from a classical-liberal viewpoint. Vedder-Gallaway show ratings by establishment historians or “court historians” over the years and then place the polls beside their objectively-created standard. The reader will see that other authors herein differ at times and to some degree from the Vedder-Gallaway objective rating insofar as whether a president is “good” or “bad” from a classical-liberal viewpoint.

David Gordon shows that President Washington has been rated as one of the three greatest presidents by most historians’ polls, as well as the general public opinion, because of his unquestionable integrity rather than his philosophy of government or his actions during his two terms as president. Scott Trask covers the two administrations of Thomas Jefferson and shows the difficulty of working within the framework of the Constitution to accomplish goals which the president feels are “right,” such as the Louisiana Purchase. Trask also refers to the problems of Jefferson and the Barbary pirates. Modern advocates of the idea that the Constitution does not require a declaration of war by Congress to enable the president to send troops abroad often point to the experience of Presidents Jefferson and Madison in dealing with these pirates without a declaration of war. Therefore, they argue that modern presidents need no declaration of war by Congress. Louis Fisher comments about this modern position and replies specifically to historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., as follows:

Harking back to Jefferson’s use of ships to repel the Barbary pirates, Schlesinger claimed that American Presidents “have repeatedly committed American armed forces abroad without prior Congressional consultation or approval.”

Schlesinger neglected to point out that Jefferson told Congress he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.” It was the prerogative of Congress to authorize “measures of offense also.” Congress enacted ten statutes authorizing action by Presidents Jefferson and Madison in the Barbary wars.[43]

Marshall DeRosa points out that the Supreme Court has been an accomplice to the rise of executive power, and while this is true throughout the presidency, and especially during the term of President Franklin Roosevelt, most of his emphasis relates to the period of time from 1812 to 1826, and therefore showcases Jefferson. He emphasizes that the attack on states’ rights by the Supreme Court in the early Republic weakened the checks and balances intended by the Founders on the power of the central government. Randall Holcombe’s chapter on the electoral college centers mainly on its evolution from the time of President Washington to the election of President Jackson, with special emphasis on the administration of Jackson. He points out correctly that the framers of the Constitution had a great fear that democracy would destroy liberty if left unchecked and unrestrained, therefore the electoral college was designed to prevent “King Numbers” from selecting the president. He further points out that Andrew Jackson had an unrealistic confidence in democracy and failed to see the wisdom of the Founding Fathers. The demise of the electoral college, as it was envisioned by the Founders, has contributed greatly to the decline in the quality of presidents, especially in the twentieth century.

Clyde Wilson relates the problem of political parties as it may affect the presidency, and while this theme is applicable to all of the presidents, he concentrates mainly on the Jacksonian era, and for that reason, I have put his essay at this point. The title of Wilson’s chapter, “The American President: From Cincinnatus to Caesar,” could have served as the title of this book.

The Founders looked to the example of the ancient Roman Republic and its leaders for much of their inspiration in creating the American Republic. One of the heroes of the Roman Republic was the legendary general and statesman Cincinnatus who was chosen by the Senate and called from his farm in 458 B.C. to lead Rome and its army in order to save the Republic. Upon achieving victory he immediately relinquished all of his political and military powers and returned to his plow on his four-acre farm. In fact, George Washington became the first president of The Society of Cincinnati in America because of his relinquishment of military and political power and retirement to his home at Mt. Vernon.[44]

The main theme of the book traces the progression of power exercised by American presidents from the early American Republic, which compared favorably with the laudatory ideal of Cincinnatus, up to the eventual reality of the power-hungry Caesars which later appeared as presidents in American history. The history of Rome is very similar in this respect to the history of America. The question inherent in our study of the American presidency created by our Founders is to determine how it degenerated into the office of American Caesar. Did the character of the man who held the office corrupt it, or did the power of the office, as it evolved, corrupt the man? Or was it a combination of the two? Was there too much latent power in the original creation of the office as the Anti-Federalists claimed? Or was the power externally created and added to the position by corrupt or misguided men?

Jeffrey Hummel’s chapter on Martin Van Buren asserts that he is our best example of a “good” classical-liberal president and compares him to the British statesman and classical liberal, William Gladstone. Hummel shows that during Van Buren’s one term, he was primarily concerned with protecting individual liberty in both his domestic and foreign policies and resisted the temptation to enlarge the powers of the central government when given the opportunity to do so. Presidents must be judged on their “greatness” when they had the levers of power in their hands. While Jefferson, by most measurements, would be considered a “great” man and maybe the greatest to serve as president, Van Buren may have been a “better” president because of the actions he took when he had the power to do so. The reader will see in a footnote to Clyde Wilson’s chapter that he nominates John Tyler as one of the great classical-liberal presidents, placing him possibly above Van Buren.

Tom DiLorenzo and I team up on the critique of Abraham Lincoln, who is generally considered by most professional historians and the general public as one of the three “greatest” presidents in American history. DiLorenzo concentrates on Lincoln’s economic policies, and specifically the protective tariff and mercantilism, which were major causes of the American Civil War. I also show the importance of the protective tariff and other political pressures which motivated Lincoln to wage war against the South and examine in detail his masterful political trick of maneuvering the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter, rallying what had been weak support in the North into a strong force to preserve the Union. Lincoln’s war resulted in a victory for the economic policies of mercantilism and the political idea of a strong centralized government which destroyed the idea of states’ rights thereby changing the course of American history by 180 degrees.

Scott Trask and Carey Roberts cover the amazing administration of President Andrew Johnson. Johnson took a courageous stand against the Radical Republicans in Congress, who wanted to impose military rule and conquest of the South in order to perpetuate the new, regional Republican Party. The period of Andrew Johnson’s administration and the several which followed it are known as the Reconstruction era, one of the most neglected periods of study. It is also one of the most important in order to understand the purpose and result of the Civil War as demonstrated by the increase of power into the central government and general decline of states’ rights and individual liberty. Generally, modern professional historians have not been kind to Andrew Johnson. John F. Kennedy, in his excellent book, Profiles in Courage, tells the interesting and courageous story of Senator Edmund G. Ross of Kansas, who, along with six other senators, voted not guilty at the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, and thus destroyed their own political careers while supporting the Constitution. Kennedy could have easily just written about the political courage of Andrew Johnson.[45]

Joseph Stromberg addresses the next major change in American history which occurred during the administration of President McKinley, which carried America into foreign imperialism by acquiring an Asian empire. The abandonment of the 100-year-old tradition of noninterventionism was largely the result of big government joining with big business. Thomas Woods examines the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt and shows how he enjoyed the exercise of power and openly advocated the “Imperial Presidency,” which would later be consummated by his cousin, Franklin. Theodore Roosevelt completely turned the ideas of the Founders upside down by assuming that, as president, he had the power to act unless specifically prohibited from doing so by the Constitution. He is truly an excellent example of the beginning of the modern American Imperial Presidency. George Bittlingmayer’s chapter on the presidential use and abuse of the Sherman Antitrust Act from Cleveland to Clinton is inserted at this point because much of the history he examines relates to the actions of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft during the “Trust Busting Era.” The Sherman Act became the principal weapon in the battle of the economic titans as the House of Morgan battled the Rockefeller interests. This Act made winning the presidency a major economic factor since the executive branch included the Justice Department which administered this Act, and it could be used as a weapon against one’s economic enemies. William Marina examines William Howard Taft, who was first the administrator of McKinley’s colonial empire in Asia. Marina addresses the question of whether Taft supported imperialism or was a reluctant imperialist and examines the bureaucracy that he created.

Richard Gamble’s assessment of Woodrow Wilson’s administration is very timely since America, under President Clinton, reinstituted Wilson’s policy of “humanitarian” wars. President George Washington, in his Farewell Address, strongly warned against America becoming involved in the constant wars of Europe. Woodrow Wilson explicitly repudiated that advice and launched America into World War I, which has drastically changed both American and European history. It was primarily Wilson’s war which caused the great ideas of classical liberalism to be abandoned for the remainder of the twentieth century.

Tom DiLorenzo and I again team up on the president who firmly established the Imperial Presidency, Franklin Roosevelt. DiLorenzo covers his New Deal economic policies and I cover the story of Pearl Harbor and show how he followed Lincoln’s example by causing the “enemy” to fire the first shot, thereby unifying a reluctant American people into waging a war by deceitfully making them believe that Japan was the aggressor.

Barry Dean Simpson and Yuri Maltsev team up to show how Josef Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt joined forces to cause despotism to be a dominant factor following World War II. Maltsev was an economic adviser to the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and he has a unique perspective in viewing Franklin Roosevelt as a world leader who had the bloody dictator Stalin as his “partner in crime.”[46]

Paul Gottfried examines the original ideas of the framers who designed the Constitution to allow the legislative branch to lead the American Republic, but today it is the presidency which is dominant and the main danger to individual liberty. Ralph Raico shows how President Truman exercised the imperial powers established primarily by his predecessor in office in both foreign and domestic affairs and openly proclaimed for the first time in American history that a president can declare war and may ignore the Constitution which clearly provides that only Congress can declare war. Truman said he could simply send troops to Asia without Congressional authority or approval. Raico’s article, which covers Truman’s foreign and domestic policies, demonstrates clearly that Truman does not deserve, from a classical-liberal viewpoint, to be rated highly, as the Vedder-Gallaway objective test rated him.

Michael Levin examines the presidency in the role of social engineer over the American people, and he discusses mostly the presidencies of Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Nixon. Joseph Salerno examines the presidential mismanagement of the economy, and in particular the monetary policies of John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

The final chapter is by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, who states his objections to the Constitution in the same spirit as such notable Anti-Federalists as Patrick Henry and George Mason did when the Constitution was being written and ratified. Patrick Henry refused to go to the Constitutional Convention because he “smelled a rat,” and George Mason refused to sign the Constitution as a delegate because of the strong centralization of power into the federal government which the document provided. Patrick Henry and George Mason have been proven correct by American history and Hoppe believes that the fatal error was to give the central government the power to tax and legislate, even though the original Constitution placed much limitation on these powers. It took a Constitutional amendment in 1913 during the administration of Woodrow Wilson to allow the income tax, and Congress now legislates on almost all issues, not just those involving powers delegated to the central government by the Constitution. Federalism and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments have very little, if any, meaning to any of the three branches of government today. Hoppe suggests that we may have reached a point of no return with our present Constitution and that a new “American Revolution” in political thought may be needed in order to protect individual liberty.

Appendix A contains the courageous speech by Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, and it cost him dearly. He was later arrested and tried by a military court in Ohio which convicted him for the expression of his political opinions and exiled him from the United States—a rare and unconstitutional sentence. He condemned the dictatorial conduct of President Lincoln who virtually destroyed the Constitutional limitations on the power of the president through his concept of the “war powers.” Lincoln’s actions during the Civil War were the greatest usurpations of power by any president in American history and set a harmful example which had tremendous influence on such twentieth-century presidents as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

Appendix B contains the outstanding speech by U.S. Senator Robert M. La Follette, Sr., opposing President Woodrow Wilson’s request for a declaration of war against Germany for World War I. The Senator has been proven correct. America’s entry into that war was probably the greatest error in American history. America’s entry into the war led to the Treaty of Versailles, which was so unfair to Germany that it created conditions which allowed Hitler to assume power by advocating the repeal or overthrow of the treaty. Senator La Follette has been proven correct in his opposition to entering World War I, signing the Treaty of Versailles, and joining the League of Nations. The League of Nations proved to be simply a vehicle by which England and France tried to enforce the unfair and vindictive Versailles treaty.

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[1] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Imperial Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

[2] Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency: An Intellectual History (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994).

[3] President Washington is invariably ranked with Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt as the three greatest presidents in these polls of the professional historians, which speaks volumes about the political persuasion of a large part of this profession.

[4] Ralph Raico, “The Rise, Fall, and Renaissance of Classical Liberalism—Part I” Freedom Daily (August 1992): 11.

[5] Felix Morley, The Foreign Policy of the United States (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951), p. 4.

[6] This was first noted in two popular magazines at the time, the New Republic and Nation which both supported their ideas. See Dwight D. Murphey, Liberalism in Contemporary America (McLean, Va.: Council for Social and Economic Studies, 1992).

[7]Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, deluxe 2nd ed. (New York: New World Dictionaries/Simon and Schuster, 1979), p. 334.

[8] David Conway, Classical Liberalism: The Unvanquished Ideal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); see also another excellent history and analysis of classical liberalism in Great Thinkers in Classical Liberalism, vol. 1, The Locke-Smith Review, Amy H. Sturgis, ed. (Nashville, Tenn.: LockeSmith Institute, 1994).

[9] Conway, Classical Liberalism, p. 8.

[10] Ibid., p. 25.

[11] Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education and San Francisco: Cobden Press, 1985).

[12] See the classic work by Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State (New York: Free Life Editions, 1973).

[13] See Joan Kennedy Taylor, ed., Liberty Against Power: Essays by Roy A. Childs, Jr. (San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1994).

[14] Charles T. Sprading, ed., Liberty and the Great Libertarians: Anthology on Liberty, A Handbook of Freedom (New York: Arno Press and The New York Times, 1972), p. 82.

[15] Antony Jay, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 193 (emphasis added).

[16] Christopher Hollis, The American Heresy (New York: Minton, Balch, 1930), p. 38.

[17] Sprading, ed., Liberty and the Great Libertarians, p. 53.

[18] Ludwig von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1969), pp. 46–47.

[19] Yohann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin as quoted by F.A. Hayek in The Collected Works of F.A. Hayek, vol. 10, Socialism and War: Essays, Documents, Reviews, Bruce Caldwell, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 175.

[20] John V. Denson, ed., The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999), app. 1, p. 496; see also Essays in the History of Liberty: Selected Writings of Lord Acton, J. Rufus Fears, ed. (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Classics, 1985), p. 365.

[21] See Christopher Hollis, The American Heresy, cited earlier. This is an excellent study of American history which concludes that the Jeffersonian theory of a limited central government and States’ rights ended with the Civil War and was replaced by Hamilton’s ideas of big government in partnership with big business, which was solidified into place by Woodrow Wilson who led America into World War I.

[22] Richard E. Welch, Jr., The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988), pp. 118, 129.

[23] Ibid., pp. 83, 88, 93.

[24] Ibid., p. 147.

[25] Ibid., pp. 147, 207.

[26] Garet Garrett, “The Revolution Was” in The People’s Pottage (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, [1953] 1993), p. 55.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Louis Fisher, Presidential War Power (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), p. 42.

[29] H.D. Rickover, How the Battleship Maine was Destroyed (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Navy, 1976), p. 91.

[30] Welch, The Presidencies of Grover Cleveland, p. 145.

[31] Ibid., p. 147.

[32] Ibid., p. 211.

[33] For the same opinion, see David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, “Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896–1900,” The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy vol. 4, no. 4 (Spring 2000): 555–71.

[34] The interested student may want to consult the following works analyzing the Harding and Coolidge administrations: Eugene P. Trani and David L. Wilson, The Presidency of Warren G. Harding (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1977) and Robert Sobel, Coolidge: An American Enigma (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 1998).

[35] Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency, p. 208.

[36] Ibid., p. 212.

[37] Edward S. Corwin, Total War and the Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), p. vii.

[38] Ibid., p. 16.

[39] Hughes served in numerous public offices including Governor of New York, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Secretary of State and as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1930 to 1941. Woodrow Wilson barely defeated him for the presidency in 1916.

[40] Corwin, Total War and the Constitution, p. 2; see also Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency, p. 93 (emphasis added).

[41] Corwin, Total War and the Constitution, pp. vii and viii.

[42] Ibid., p. viii.

[43] Fisher, Presidential War Power, p. 90.

[44] See Garry Wills, Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment, Images of Power in Early America (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984).

[45] John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: HarperPerennial, 1964), pp. 132–58. Also for a very favorable and thorough analysis of the amazing career of Andrew Johnson, including his presidency and his subsequent return to the U.S. Senate, see Lloyd Paul Stryker, Andrew Johnson: A Study in Courage (New York: Macmillan, 1929).

[46] For an excellent analysis of the disastrous consequences of Franklin Roosevelt’s alliance with the bloody dictator Josef Stalin, see Amos Perlmutter, FDR and Stalin: A Not So Grand Alliance, 1943–1945 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993).