Summary: The brevity of Lincoln’s letter belies its far-reaching implications. LINCOLN, ABRAHAM. Autograph Letter Signed, to Secretary of State William H. Seward, “Executive Mansion,” Washington, D.C., March 5, 1862. Signed at bottom by “William H. Seward,” with a note in an unidentified contemporary hand. 1 p. 4¾ x 7¼”. Inventory #12054 $180,000 On March 5, 1862, President Lincoln requests that Secretary of State William Seward summon a meeting of his cabinet. The following day, the president presented a special message to Congress with his plan to offer to pay to end slavery.
Complete Transcript:
“Executive Mansion
March 5, 1862 Hon. Sec. of State
My dear Sir
Please summon the Cabinet to meet me here at 7 o’clock this evening. Yours truly
A. Lincoln [Signature of recipient:] William H Seward
[Notation, in a third hand:]
March 6th 1862 The Presidents Message to Congress, Recommending Compensated Emancipation. To preserve the Union” Historical Background:
A draft of Lincoln’s message to Congress, preserved in the Library of Congress, contains revisions likely made with his Cabinet. Lincoln called for a Congressional resolution endorsing compensated emancipation and pledging federal support to states that adopted it. The president termed his measure “one of the most efficient means of self-preservation,” stating that “in my judgment, gradual, and not sudden emancipation, is better for all.” A plan to pay to end slavery, he stressed, would ensure that the border slave states would have nothing to gain by joining the Confederacy. A week later, Lincoln wrote to Senator James McDougall, comparing the cost of paying to end slavery to the cost of the war. Lincoln estimated that buying the freedom of the 432,622 slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri and Washington, D.C. would amount to $173,048,800 — the cost of war for 87 days. “Do you doubt,” Lincoln wrote, “that taking the initiatory steps on the part of those states and the District, would shorten the war more than eighty-seven days, and thus be an actual saving of expense?” The idea of compensated emancipation never took root. On July 22, Lincoln convened another meeting to announce that he was prepared to take an even more radical step: emancipation without compensation to slave owners. Lincoln was persuaded by his cabinet to wait for a Union victory before issuing the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Additional Historical Background:
Little specific information has survived regarding the cabinet meeting convened by this note. Lincoln probably presented his draft message for comment; the surviving draft contains revisions likely made during this meeting based on suggestions by his cabinet. In his letter to McDougall, Lincoln further emphasized the monetary advantages of his plan: “The sum thus given, as to time and manner, I think would not be half as onerous, as would be an equal sum, raised now, for the indefinite prosecution of the war.” One month later, on April 10, Congress passed a joint resolution in accordance with Lincoln’s recommendations. On April 16, the President signed a historic bill prohibiting slavery in the District of Columbia which incorporated compensated emancipation. This act entitled District slave owners to compensation of up to $300 per forfeited slave; former slaves who chose to join the overseas colonization plan were allocated up to $100 each. In the nine months leading up to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the federal government spent nearly one million dollars to gain the freedom of approximately 3,100 slaves. The District of Columbia Emancipation Act remains the only example of compensated emancipation ever put into practice in the United States. To Lincoln’s increasing frustration, however, none of the border states moved to enact compensated emancipation. The President saw a crucial opportunity slipping away. On July 12, with Congress about to adjourn, he addressed a special message to the leaders of the border states. “If you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of last March,” he charged, “the war would now be substantially ended.” Lincoln pleaded with them to reconsider the measure, hinting that the opportunity would not last: “The incidents of the war can not be avoided. If the war continue long, as it must, if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion...It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.” While the border states temporized, the inexorable “friction and abrasion” Lincoln had predicted continued. On July 17, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which emancipated all slaves belonging to persons assisting the rebellion, forbade the military to return any fugitive slaves, and authorized the President to employ “persons of African descent” in any capacity in order to suppress the rebellion. The Militia Act, passed by Congress the same day, specifically permitted “persons of African descent” to serve in the military and granted those escaped slaves serving their freedom. Provenance:
Philip D. Sang Collection, Part III, Sotheby Parke Bernet Auction, June 20, 1979, lot 759.
Condition: 8vo (7 x 4 7/16 inches), portion only of integral blank present. References:
Published in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 5:144.
According to Basler, the manuscript draft of Lincoln’s message to Congress is held in the Robert Todd Lincoln Collection of the Lincoln Papers in the Library of Congress, and the official document, signed by Lincoln, is held by the National Archives (Basler, 5:146, n. 1).
|
