“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our [Constitutional] convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression up on us.”
— Lincoln testifying in objection to President James Polk’s actions prior to the Mexican War. John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln (12 vols., New York, 1905), 111-112, cited in Keith L. Nelson, “The ‘Warfare State’: History of a Concept,” The Pacific Historical Review, v.40, no.2 (May, 1971): 130.
