Lincoln’s Legacy: Historic Americana from the Life of Abraham Lincoln

One sheet; 12 1/4 x 9 in. (317 x 228 mm); some discoloration; minor spotting.

A FIERY RESPONSE TO THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, ATTRIBUTED TO CONFEDERATE PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS.

Reaction to the Emancipation Proclamation was swift, and while greeted with jubilation amongst freedmen and slaves, others considered it to be an unnecessary escalation of the war, and a dangerous one at that. Internationally, the Proclamation helped to endear European nations to the Union cause, these countries themselves having abolished slavery within their realms decades prior.

In the Confederacy, however, the response was far less positive. Confederate President Jefferson Davis called it "the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man" and immediately requested a law which would have prosecuted captured Union soldiers as having incited slave rebellions. The Confederate Congress did him one better and added a provision that captured Union officers of the United States Colored Troops could be turned over to authorities of whichever state they were captured in to be dealt with however the state saw fit, and even allowed for execution.

The present broadside, commonly attributed to Jefferson Davis, declares that "All negroes who shall be taken in any of the States in which slavery does not now exist, in the progress of our arms, shall be adjudged, immediately after such capture, to occupy the slave status, and in all States which shall be vanquished by our arms, all free negroes shall, ipso facto, be reduced to the condition of helotism, so that the respective normal conditions of the white and black races may be ultimately placed on a permanent basis, so as to prevent the public peace from being thereafter endangered." The author further writes that "the day is not distant when the old Union will be restored with slavery nationally declared to be the proper condition of all of African descent..."

Shortly before the Fall of Richmond, Davis, along with his family and numerous high-ranking Confederate officers, fled south. He was implicated as a conspirator in Lincoln's death following the assassination and a $100,000 bounty was placed on his head. He was captured by Union soldiers on May 9 in Georgia and was imprisoned for two years.

RARE: According to online records, this broadside has not appeared at auction in over 40 years. Crandall 604; Sabin 18837; Parrish & Willingham 916

Provenance:

Louise Taper, Beverly Hills, California