Powers of the President of the United States The amount of military detail handled personally by the President in wartime has varied dramatically. George Washington, the first U.S. president, firmly established military subordination under civilian authority. In 1794, Washington used his constitutional powers to assemble 12,000 militia to quell the Whiskey Rebellion—a conflict in western Pennsylvania involving armed farmers and distillers who refused to pay excise tax on spirits. According to historian Joseph Ellis, this was the "first and only time a sitting American president led troops in the field", though James Madison briefly took control of artillery units in defense of Washington D.C. during the War of
First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln is an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Francis Bicknell Carpenter. In the painting, Carpenter depicts Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, and his Cabinet members reading over the Emancipation Proclamation, which proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states rebelling against the Union in the American Civil War. Lincoln presented the Emancipation Proclamation to his Cabinet on July 22, 1862, and issued the Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which took effect on January 1, 1863. Carpenter spent six months