Beschreibung:

Lincoln, AbrahamBy the President of the United States of America. A Proclamation. I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare … That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. … Done at the city of Washington this twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two. [Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, ca. 22–25 September 1862] Printed circular (332 x 211 mm) on a bifolium of wove paper, the text of Lincoln's Proclamation printed on the recto and verso of the second leaf, Secretary of State William H. Seward's letter of transmittal printed on the recto of the initial conjugate leaf; some very light handling soiling, pencilled date ("Sept 22 1862") at head of first leaf. Blue morocco portfolio gilt. The official State Department printing of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the earliest obtainable printing of the Emancipation Proclamation in any form. One of six recorded copies and the only one in private hands. Abraham Lincoln is now susceptible to the charge that he was not an "abolitionist," meaning one who called for the immediate cessation of slavery. He recognized constitutional and practical limits to the ability of the nation to curtail the institution. Thus, within the first few minutes of his First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1861, he stated, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." Lincoln is equally susceptible to the charge that he was not free from the racial prejudices of his time. But Lincoln is not susceptible to the charge that he was not wholly and passionately opposed to slavery. In 1855, Lincoln confided to his good friend Joshua Speed that he was still tormented by the memory, from fourteen years earlier, of having seen a group of shackled slaves while he was travelling by steamship from Louisville to St. Louis. While Lincoln had been anti-slavery for decades, he only began to openly express those views when he ran for the United States Senate against Stephen Douglas in 1858. As candidate Lincoln said at a Chicago rally in July of that year, "I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any Abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the Nebraska Bill began." But despite his personal abhorrence of slavery, Lincoln was constrained not just by the Constitution, but also by political and military reality. Horace Greeley's letter-editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," published in the New York Tribune, perfectly expressed the frustrations of those who called for full and immediate emancipation. Greeley accused the President of being "strangely and disastrously remiss" by delaying emancipation; of being "unduly influenced by the counsels … of certain fossil politicians hailing from Border Slave States"; and of seeming to pursue a "preposterous and futile" strategy by attempting "to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause." Greeley printed Lincoln's response in the 25 August 1862 issue of the Tribune. The President's answer was unequivocal: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.