President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur creation of a professional military. This made civilian control increasingly problematic when coupled with the constitutional division of powers between the President as commander-in-chief, and the Congress with its power to raise armies, maintain a navy, and wage wars. In relieving MacArthur for failing to "respect the authority of the President" by privately communicating with Congress, Truman upheld the President's role as pre-eminent. Harry S. Truman became President of the United States on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945, and won an unexpected victory in the 1948 presidential election. He was the only president who served after 1897
President Truman's relief of General Douglas MacArthur own proposal. He later wrote: For the moment, however, he did. There had been dramatic confrontations over policy before, the most notable of which was between President Abraham Lincoln and Major General George McClellan, in 1862. Another example was President James Polk's recall of Major General Winfield Scott after the Mexican–American War. Before relieving MacArthur, Truman consulted history books on how Lincoln and Polk dealt with their generals. Truman later said that Polk was his favorite president because "he had the courage to tell Congress to go to Hell on foreign policy matters." There were genuine differences of opinion over