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
American President Lines and reorganized as an independent company. With that the Dollar Steamship, a long potent force in American shipping, became part of maritime history. By 1940, the U.S. government had commissioned 16 new ships for APL, continuing the "president" naming of ships, one of these examples being SS "President Jackson", a C-3 class merchant vessel. In 1941, the US entered World War II, and in 1942 the War Shipping Administration was created, of which APL was an agent. APL worked on the management of some of the Administration's ships, maintaining and overhauling them as well as crewing them and being responsible