ABSTRACT
The Presidency remained the chief instrument of crisis government in the United States. The expansion of the administration was first of all an expansion of the President's own power, and Woodrow Wilson was as much the pivot of the World War government as Abraham Lincoln had been of the Civil War administration. The Congress of the United States flourished even more importantly in the World War than it had in the dark days of 1861-1865. Neither actually nor potentially were the liberties of the American people abridged to any serious degree in the course of the First World War. The most sizable restriction of traditional American liberty was worked by the controls set up by the administration over the nation's economic life. The ultimate sanction of the administration's activities was the executive power of the federal government centered in the President, particularly his authority to commandeer any recalcitrant business organization.
