In the early years of the United States under the Constitution, James Madison made one of the most compelling constitutional arguments against unilateral presidential war powers. Through their actions, the first three presidential administrations of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson notably upheld this position. And once in office himself, Madison unsurprisingly followed the same approach.
Their statements and, more importantly, their actions further undercut the modern assertion that while the Constitution delegates to Congress the power to “declare war,” the president also has expansive authority to make unilateral decisions about war and peace.
CONSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE
The Constitution expressly delegates the power to “declare war” to Congress and not the executive branch.
In the fourth of his Letters of Helvidius, Madison called this the wisest part of the Constitution.
“In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. Beside the objection to such a mixture of heterogeneous powers: the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man”
Madison astutely pointed out that war is “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.”
He drove this point home in his Political Observations, writing, “The separation of the power of declaring war, from that of conducting it, is wisely contrived, to exclude the danger of its being declared for the sake of its being conducted.”
In Helvidius I, Madison emphasized that from a constitutional standpoint, all legislative authority is vested in Congress, and this logically included the power to change the state of things from peace to war.
“In the general distribution of powers, we find that of declaring war expressly vested in the congress, where every other legislative power is declared to be vested.”
It follows that “the constitutional idea of this power would seem then clearly to be, that it is of a legislative and not an executive nature.”
Madison argued that there is no presidential authority to declare war because it is fundamentally a legislative function. The president’s role is to “execute” laws, and as he explained, “A declaration that there shall be war, is not an execution of laws: it does not suppose pre-existing laws to be executed: it is not, in any respect, an act merely executive.”
Madison further noted that a declaration of war “has the effect of repealing all the laws operating in a state of peace, so far as they are inconsistent with a state of war.”
Madison summed it up in Helvidius II by writing, “The declaring of war is expressly made a legislative function.” [Emphasis added.]
“Whenever, then, a question occurs, whether war shall be declared, or whether public stipulations require it, the question necessarily belongs to the department to which those functions belong–and no other department can be in the execution of its proper functions, if it should undertake to decide such a question.”
In other words, when the president decides any question of war and peace, except for authorizing purely defensive actions, he acts outside his constitutional authority. The president only has the power to act after Congress provides explicit instructions in the form of a formal declaration of war, or authorization to take some kind of offensive military action. Once Congress acts, the president is limited to its instructions, whether it grants an open-ended authorization to wage war, or a more limited offensive response.
In Helvidius III, Madison called this principle “one of the most express and explicit parts of the Constitution,” and he insisted, “To endeavor to abridge or affect it by strained inferences, and by hypothetical or singular occurrences, naturally warns the reader of some lurking fallacy.”
He emphatically declared in Helvidius IV, “Every just view that can be taken of this subject, admonishes the public of the necessity of a rigid adherence to the simple, the received, and the fundamental doctrine of the Constitution.” [Emphasis added]
Hellbound and Down 
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