Throughout his presidency, Lincoln places great importance on the Constitution as the instrument of our success. He always strives to insure that all his actions as president are within the bounds specified for the president and the federal government by the Constitution. In his Fourth of July Message to Congress in 1861, he painstakingly justifies himself in suspending habeas corpus by noting that such power is given is case of "invasion or rebellion."
Even though the power is given in Article I, the article dealing with the legislative branch, he reasons that since it may be used in time of invasion or rebellion, it was not intended that it should lay idle, waiting for Congress, while the invasion or rebellion succeeds. If it were, there would be no reason to have the power, for it would be useless. He uses his power as commander-in-chief to legitimize his raising of 75,000 troops to quell the insurrection.
His oath of office becomes his justification for his attempts to suppress the rebellion on more than one occasion. He tells the nation is his First Inaugural Address that he "shall have the most solemn (oath, registered in Heaven), to preserve, protect and defend" the Constitution. 30 The Emancipation Proclamation is based purely in the powers given to the President as commander-in-chief, hence its limited nature. Finally, he realized the importance of the constitutional forms. If the election of 1864 had been postponed, it could have been taken as a sign that the President has unlimited powers in times of crisis, and that ours is a government that cannot function normally in such times.
