 Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), Autograph Letter Signed (“A.Lincoln”) as President, to Secretary of State William H. Seward (1801-1872); “Executive Mansion,” Washington, DC, March 5, 1862. Signed at bottom “William H. Seward,” beneath which is a note in an unidentified contemporary hand; 1 page.
Inventory# 12054 $180,000
Transcript:
Executive Mansion
March 5, 1862
Hon. Sec. of State
My dear Sir,
Please summon the Cabinet to meet me 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:
This letter’s brevity belies its far-reaching implications. Here, President Lincoln directs the secretary of state to convene a cabinet meeting on the evening prior to his special message to Congress. During this advance meeting, Lincoln presented his proposal for compensated emancipation.
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. The next day, March 6, 1862, Lincoln sent his special message to Congress. In it, he called for a congressional resolution endorsing compensated emancipation and pledging federal support to states that adopted such legislation. 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.” The initiation of compensated emancipation, he stressed, would ensure that none of the slave states of the North would have anything to gain by joining the Confederacy.
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. Lincoln’s own thinking on the issue of slavery had undergone a profound evolution in these critical five months. On July 22, Lincoln convened another cabinet meeting to announce that he was prepared to take an even more radical step: the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
References:
Published in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 5:144.
Condition:
8vo (7 x 4 7/16 inches), portion only of integral blank present.
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