74 e lusive v ictories
one side, Republican Radicals wanted to ensure the thorough
destruction of the antebellum southern economic system through a
strongly statist approach in which the national government remade
the South from the bottom up, creating real opportunities for the
advance of freedmen. But this agenda would require extended mil-
itary occupation, a costly proposition. A conservative alternative envi-
sioned rapid withdrawal of most occupying military forces and their
demobilization, followed by the quick return of southern states to the
Union and an end to national oversight over their internal aff airs.
Northern fi nanciers, eager to see the reduction of expenditures and
the repayment of war debts, backed the conservative option, and they
had gained considerable standing in the Republican Party through
their vital eff orts to raise money for the Union war eff ort. Th e two
sides began a contest for control from the moment the South surren-
dered, and Lincoln would have been caught in the crossfi re. In sum,
even a victorious and popular president has less time than he imagines
when a war ends.
How Many Limbs Must Be Amputated?
Lincoln’s expansion of presidential power was controversial at the time
and remains a subject of debate, one that sharpens whenever a president
asserts broad claims to unilateral authority. In the opening moments of
the confl ict, Lincoln acted on his own initiative to set in motion the
Union war eff ort and secure control over wavering Border States, eff ec-
tively inventing a new conception of presidential wartime emergency
power. He continued throughout the war to exercise powers not
explicitly given in the Constitution to the president. Among the
measures he ordered were several that imposed signifi cant limitations
on traditional civil liberties. Critics accused him of acting as a dictator,
but they surely overstated the matter. Certainly despots do not go to the
lengths that Lincoln did to explain and justify their actions or commute
the sentence of their fiercest critic, as he did with the outspoken
Clement Vallandigham. But if Lincoln exercised emergency power
with moderation, he established a rationale for assertion of presidential
power during wartime that could be taken up by successors who might
not be so restrained.