ABSTRACT
The governments of both Union and Confederacy struggled to define their objectives, mobilise their resources, satisfy their supporters, and answer their critics, and all in a situation without parallel in earlier American experience. In any formal sense, as two separate branches of the federal government, the executive and the legislature were far apart in the Civil War years, but at the personal and practical level there were few barriers, and the White House doors were open to a large number of Senators and Representatives. To fight that war, the federal government would have to extend its authority as never before, and conflict between president and Congress over the exercise and control of such powers was natural and even healthy. In the creation of their new government, Southerners displayed a harmony and a decisiveness which were happy but misleading auguries for their future.
