Center for Civic Education - Lincoln Bicentennial with Supplemental Lesson: Page 5

Was President Lincoln’s order to blockade ports of the Confederacy unconstitutional?

“trusting then, as now, that Congress would readily ratify them.” He “believed that nothing was done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress.” So, he asked Congress to support his policies. Congress quickly enacted laws, on July 13, to approve the president’s strong and expansive use of war powers, to greatly enlarge the Union’s military forces, and to appropriate funds in support of the war. A short time later, on August 5, a supermajority of Congress voted for a bill that said, “all the acts, proclamations, and orders of the president” since his inauguration “respecting the army and navy of the United States, and calling out or relating to the militia or volunteers from the States, are hereby approved and in all respects legalized and made valid…as if they had been issued and done under the previous express authority and direction of the Congress of the United States.”

The Prize Cases, which came before the Supreme Court in 1863 (67 U.S. 635), posed another constitutional test of Lincoln’s use of war powers during an emergency. On April 19, Lincoln had proclaimed a blockade of ports in the Confederate states. Four owners of ships seized by U.S. naval forces claimed the president had exceeded his executive authority under the Constitution by blockading seaports without a declaration of war by Congress. The Court decided (5 votes to 4) against the petitioners, and concluded that the president had constitutionally used his war powers in a moment of crisis to oppose an insurrection.

Did President Lincoln Violate the Constitutional Rights of Individuals?

The Court’s slim majority and dissenting opinions in the Prize Cases mirrored the public controversy about Lincoln’s wartime decisions. In particular, critics claimed Lincoln’s strong use of executive power to maintain national security had produced unconstitutional violations of individual rights.

Lincoln perceived the paradox posed by his need to simultaneously exercise and limit his executive power in order to preserve the Union and its Constitution. >