BEFORE THE WAR, Roosevelt’s New Deal had been constructed on the basis of specific authorization granted by Congress, but wartime urgencies required broader, less specific, authority. Congress quickly gave it to him—in two War Powers Acts granting the President enormous discretionary authority—and he quickly used it, and, in his role as wartime

Debt, dependency, threats, and force, in that order, was the thinking of the day. These secret memos were written while Jefferson served as president of the United States.