Don McLean memorialized the death of Buddy Holly with his masterpiece The Day the Music Died. William A. Dunning shows when the Constitution died in his essay The Constitution of the United States in Civil War. In that essay there is a section called The Presidential Dictatorship and in the beginning of this section, he describes some of the violations of the Constitution that took place early in the Lincoln presidency:
Calling out the militia
Establishing a blockade of Southern ports
“…calling for the enlistment of forty thousand three-year volunteers, and the increase of the regular army by over twenty thousand men, and the navy by eighteen thousand.”
The list is not new and more could be added, but Dunning shows intention and even conspiracy to act illegally. He claims Lincoln had serious doubts of the constitutionality of increasing the standing army and navy. He cites and quotes directly from Edward McPherson’s mammoth The Political History of the United States of America During the Great Rebellion.
“These measures whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity, trusting then as now that Congress would readily ratify them. It is believed that nothing has been done beyond the constitutional competency of Congress.”
McPherson was a Pennsylvanian Whig and then a Republican US House Representative from 1859 to 1863 so he had firsthand experience with how Washington DC was operating in early 1861. Dunning then refers to Senator Howe of Wisconsin and says that he “proclaimed in the Senate that he approved it in exact proportion to the extent to which it was a violation of the existing law.” I went to the Congressional record and that was indeed Howe’s sentiment.
Here is how Dunning summarizes it.
“The idea of a government limited by the written instructions of a past generation had already begun to grow dim in the smoke of battle.”
This was the death of the country’s leaders making significant efforts to operate according to the Constitution. Lincoln and the 37th Congress changed it forever and we see the results today.