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
Who Stole the American Dream? Smith's "hopefulness that the indomitable American spirit can turn things around through grass roots efforts akin to the recent Arab Spring should make lobbyists and power brokers in Washington nervous, and that's not a bad thing." Who Stole the American Dream? Who Stole the American Dream? is a non-fiction book by the American author and journalist Hedrick Smith published in 2012 by Random House. It describes the consolidation of wealth in the United States, and the dismantling of the middle class. As a result, the American Dream—a national ethos, or a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity