Books and Manuscripts

[Lincoln, Abraham] Lowell, James Russell
The President's Policy
(Philadelphia: Crissy & Markley for the Union League of Philadelphia, 1864). First separate edition. 8vo. 22, (2) pp. Publisher's limp printed pink wrappers, chipping along spine and spine ends, scattered small losses and chipping along extremities and corners of front and rear wrappers; small loss in top corner of final leaf. BAL 13111; Freidel, Union Pamphlets 41

First edition of James Russell Lowell's analysis of President Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction. First printed anonymously in the North American Review in January 1864, it was reprinted here in pamphlet form by the Union League of Philadelphia. Lowell offers a balanced appraisal of Lincoln's plan for post-war reconstruction, which was delivered to Congress on December 8, 1863. Lincoln's plan offered pardons to Confederate soldiers who would take an oath of loyalty to the Constitution and accept the abolition of slavery, as well as a process for rebelling states to rejoin the Union. Toward the end of this work Lowell surmises that “the recent proclamation of amnesty will, we have no doubt, in due time bring a vast accession of strength to the emancipationists from the slaveholding States themselves…It is only by its extinction--for without it no secure union would be possible--that the sufferings and losses of the war can be repaid. That extinction accomplished, our wounds will not be long in healing.” 

Rare, this is only the second copy to come to auction in at least 40 years.