Beschreibung:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President . Partly printed document signed ("A Lincoln") as President, accomplished in a secretarial hand, Washington, D.C., 5 March 1863. 1 page, 4to, on gray paper. AUTHORIZING A "SLAVE TRADE TREATY" Lincoln signs an official State Department warrant ordering the Secretary of State to affix the Great Seal of the United States to "my ratification of the Additional Article to the slave trade treaty between the United States and Great Britain, of the 7th April 1862." As Mark Neely has written, "The slave trade, both African and domestic, and the men who participated in it were objects of moral loathing for Abraham Lincoln." Lincoln had signed the treaty with Britain, intended to further tighten the prohibited trade and increase penalties for offenders, on 7 April 1862; after ratification, its provisions were implemented by an Act of 11 July. The present additional article had been submitted to Congress on 18 February.