PROCLAMATION OF AMNESTY AND RECONSTRUCTION.
[Lincoln, Abraham]:

[Washington: Government Printing Office, ca. Dec. 8, 1863]. Broadside, 12 x 19 inches, printed in two columns on wove stock. Several faint patches of foxing, four light fold lines, two tiny closed tears at intersections of folds. A splendid, wide- margined copy in near fine condition. Very scarce. First public notice of the Dec. 8, 1863 presidential proclamation offering amnesty to citizens of the Confederacy, providing they take an oath that they "will abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves" (i.e. the Emancipation Proclamation). Toward the close of 1863, with the Confederate Army in full retreat, discussions in Congress centered on how to restore the Southern states to the Union. "The crisis which threatened to divide the friends of the Union is past," announced Lincoln. Now it was the duty of Congress to ensure that all citizens in the South, regardless of race, were guaranteed the equal protection of the law. A number of competing proposals emerged from deliberations, but in the end, during his message to Congress on Dec. 8, 1863, Lincoln declared reconstruction of the South a wholly executive responsibility and "offered 'full pardon...with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves,' to all rebels who would take an oath of future loyalty to the Constitution and pledge to obey acts of Congress and presidential proclamations relating to slavery" (Donald, pp.470-71). Those excluded from taking the oath were the highest ranking members of the Confederacy - government officials, judges, military and naval officers above the rank of army colonel or navy lieutenant, former congressmen, and "all who have engaged in treating colored persons or white persons otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war." Lincoln further encouraged the southern states to make provisions "in relation to the freed people of such State, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent, as a temporary arrangement, with their present condition as a laboring, landless, and homeless class." "Lincoln indicated that this was only one plan for reconstructing the rebel South, and while it was the best he could think of for now, he would gladly consider others and possibly adopt them. He might even modify his own classes of pardons, if that seemed warrantable...Afterward almost everybody but die-hard Democrats seemed happy with the plan" (Oates, p.371). This particular copy of this rare public broadside of Lincoln's proclamation was received on Feb. 15, 1864 at Union Army headquarters in St. Augustine, Florida, where "Major Hay" (probably James H. Hay of the 2nd Florida Cavalry) was authorized to administer the oath "to such persons of that vicinity." MONAGHAN 191 (ref).

(Item ID: WRCAM38223) $26,000.00