It's here and I am totally jazzed. To all FReepers who love the Constitution and want to know what the founders intended, this is the ultimate resoruce.
There is no numerical correspondence between the articles contained in the plan & those treated of in the pamphlet & the latter alludes to several more than are included in the former.There can be no mistake. Madison intended that a declaration of war should have a very high threshhold, as the example notes where he seriously considered a 2/3 vote of the people (the House) and the States (as represented by the Senate) for approval of such a declaration.In Mr. Pinkney's letter to Mr. Adams, accompanying his plan, he states that "very soon after the Convention met, I changed and avowed candidly the change of my opinion on giving the power to Congress to revise the State laws in certain cases, and in giving the exclusive power to the Senate to declare war, thinking it safer to refuse the first altogether, and to vest the latter in Congress."
In his pamphlet he concludes the 5th. page of his argument in favor of the first power with these remarks -- "In short, from their example, (other republics) and from our own experience, there can be no truth more evident than this, that, unless our Government is consolidated, as far as is practicable, by retrenching the State authorities, and concentering as much force & vigor in the Union, as are adequate to its exigencies, we shall soon be a divided, and consequently an unhappy people. I shall ever consider the revision and negative of the State laws, as one great and leading step to this reform, and have therefore conceived it proper to bring it into view."
On the 23. August He moved a proposition to vest this power in the Legislature, provided 2/3 of each House assented.
He does not designate the depository of the power to declare war & consequently avows no change of opinion on that subject in the pamphlet, altho' it was printed after the adjournment of the Convention and is stated to embrace the "observations he delivered at different times in the course of their discussions"
J. M. has a copy of the pamphlet much mutilated by dampness; but one in complete preservation is bound up with "Select Tracts Vol. 2." belonging to the New York Historical Society, numbered 2687.
A. The Constitution clearly grants the Congress the power to declare war, in Article 1, Section 8. The President, however, is just as clearly made the Commander in Chief of all of the armed forces, in Article 2, Section 2. That having been said, the ability to defend the nation or to take military action has often not involved the Congress directly, and the President's role as "C-in-C" is often part of the reason for that.
What this has resulted in is the essential ability of the President to order forces into hostilities to repel invasion or counter an attack, without a formal declaration of war. The conduct of war is the domain of the President.
The question of the need for a declaration of war dates all the way back to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson sent a squadron of warships to the Mediterranean to protect U.S. shipping against the forces of the Bey of Tripoli. Jefferson's instructions to the squadron were that they act in a defensive manner only, with a strictly defined order of battle. When a Tripolitan cruiser shot at a U.S. ship, the U.S. forces seized the ship, disarmed it, and released it. Jefferson's message to Congress on the incident indicated that he felt the acts to be within constitutional bounds. Alexander Hamilton wrote to Congress and espoused his belief that since the United States did not start the conflict, the United States was in a state of war, and no formal declaration was needed to conduct war actions. Congress authorized Jefferson's acts without declaring war on the Bey.
Not all acts of war, however, need place the United States into a state of war. It is without doubt an act of war to fire upon a warship of another nation. In 1967, during the Six Day War, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence ship operating off the Sinai coast. But the United States did not react as though it were at war, even though many considered the attack deliberate (both Israel and the U.S. later determined the attack to have been a mistake caused by the cloud of war).
It may be correct to say, then, that an act or war committed against the United States can place the United States into a state of war, if the United States wishes to see the act in that light. A declaration of war by the Congress places the Unites States at war without any doubt. Absent a declaration of war, the President can react to acts of war in an expedient fashion as he sees fit.