The Will to Fight: The Purpose of the Commander-in-Chief under the Constitution

In 1793 George Washington, President of the United States, set forth in his role as “Commander in Chief” to lead a military force into western Pennsylvania to suppress violent resistance to federal authority during the famous “Whisky Rebellion.”  The authority under which Washington acted is conveyed in Article II, Sec. 2, which declares, that “The President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

Section II of the Constitution is organized into four sections.  The first section describes how the presidency shall be constituted and the qualifications of the office holder.  Section two describes the “Powers” of that office.  Article three describes the president’s duties (distinguished from “Powers”) to Congress, and section four describes grounds for his non-scheduled removal from office.  The sections follow an order of importance, and in section 2 the first power enumerated is the power of Commander in Chief.

There can be no mistake that the Constitution affirms two things about presidential power.  First, the most important poower of the president is as commander-in-chief; second, that particular power is assigned exclusively to the president.  This fact is reinforced by the consideration that the United States is never without a president to exercise that authority (the Constitution provides for replacement in any eventuality).  It is not subject to delegation, and no one else may exercise it.

The precedent Washington established in 1793 demonstrates what it means to be Commander in Chief, whether the president elects to lead forces directly or to appoint a commanding field general to direct his forces.  The ultimate responsibility to appoint strategic purposes falls upon the Commander in Chief.  This is the true foundation of civilian control of the military, subsequent legislative elaborations to the contrary notwithstanding.

It was also Washington in his role as commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War who established the precedent for this understanding.  His consistent conduct during the war was to defer to the authority of Congress, even when his deference had to be muscular in order to overcome dilatoriness and confusion in Congress.  He reinforced the point most emphatically when he resigned his military commission, returning it to Congress, in 1783.  That was an unprecedented sacrifice of real power, one which commanded the awed respect even of Washington’s erstwhile enemy, George III.

At the time of Washington’s demonstration there was a “president” of the Confederation Congress (and thus of the United States) distinct from the military commander-in-chief.  Thus, at the advent of the 1787 Constitution, the new arrangement specifically aimed to unite the powers of the President and the commander-in-chief as a preferred efficiency.  The goal was quite simply to focus the coherent organizing authority of the entire society when circumstances called for the development and exercise of military force.   Such an effort was not merely logistical; it was also moral.  The commander-in-chief, therefore, is above all responsible to set the pace for the nation’s military exertions.  As I have described it in my George Washington: America’s First Progressive,

This is a simple story: the secret to successful warfare is something worth fighting for. If statesmen and military leaders fail to provide clear and frequent assurance of such a goal, there is no army under the sun that will long maintain its valor and will to fight. What this means is that the fates of war are far more surely tied to the moral convictions of those who fight than to their physical training and development. That is what George Washington understood, and it is, indeed, the only reason that Washington himself was willing to fight. (p. 36-37)