Henry Clay on War and the Constitution

Posted by Eric F. Langborgh on 11 Mar 2009 at 12:47 pm

“A declaration of war is the highest and most awful exercise of sovereignty. The convention which framed our Federal constitution had learned from the pages of history that it had been often and greatly abused. It had seen that war had often been commenced upon the most trifling pretexts; that it had been frequently waged to establish or exclude a dynasty; to snatch a crown from the head of one potentate and place it upon the head of another; that it had often been prosecuted to promote alien and other interests than those of the nation whose chief had proclaimed it, as in the case of English wars for Hanoverian interests; and, in short, that such a vast and tremendous power ought not to be confined to the perilous exercise of one single man. The convention therefore resolved to guard the war-making power against those great abuses, of which, in the hands of a monarch, it was so susceptible. And the security against those abuses which its wisdom devised was to vest the war-making power in the congress of the united States, being the immediate representatives of the people and the States. So apprehensive and jealous was the convention of its abuse in any State in the Union without the consent of Congress. Congress, then in our system of government, is the sole depository of that tremendous power.”

~ Speech in Lexington, KY, November 13, 1847, in the context of the Mexican-American War and as quoted by Senator Robert LaFollette, Sr. in “Free Speech and the Power to Declare War”, October 6, 1917

For more on the subject of War and the Constitution, see the following posts at Borg Blog:

Also, it may be well worth your time to read the debate and my further elaboration of my views on war and the Constitution that took place in the comments thread of this post. See esp. my comments at March 6, 2009 11:18 AM , March 6, 2009 11:57 AM , March 6, 2009 12:22 PM , March 6, 2009 02:58 PM , March 6, 2009 03:08 PM , March 6, 2009 04:08 PM , and my concluding remarks at March 11, 2009 01:47 AM .