Lot 3168. [Lincoln] Draft Proclamation Granting Amnesty to Confederate Prisoners

Presidential power to grant amnesty was an important aspect of Lincoln's effort to control Reconstruction in general. Lincoln never deviated from the theory that secession was illegal and that Southern states remained in the Union despite the temporary takeover of their governments by rebels. Together with the 10%-plan, the second major tenet of the December 8 Proclamation, whereby a State could elect Federal representatives with only 10% of the voting population acceding to the loyalty oath, Lincoln acted to restore both property and franchise to Southerners with as few stipulations as possible. Some radical Congressman, however, led by Thaddeus Stevens, insisted that Southern states had forfeited all their rights prior to secession and would have little more legal status than conquered nations. "What Lincoln well understood, but did not acknowledge, was that the 'metaphysical question' of reconstruction theories concealed a power struggle between Congress and the Executive over control of the process. If the southern states had reverted to the status of territories, Congress had the right to frame the terms of their readmission under its constitutional authority to govern territories and admit new states. If, on the other hand, the states were indestructible and secession was the act of individuals, the president had the power to prescribe the terms of restoration under his constitutional authority to suppress insurrection and to grant pardons and amnesty" (Macpherson Battle Cry of Freedom p 700). Lincoln must have been mindful of this when he penned the present manuscript. He was not only proffering the olive branch to individual Confederate prisoners of war but also giving evidence of his personally conservative and forgiving attitude to Reconstruction. Of course, he never had the chance to fully implement and develop this position in policy before his assassination.

The existence of this important draft was unknown for well over a century, as was generally all the material collected by Mary Ford [1816-1910] in the late 19th century and held at her family's seat in Cornwall until it was sold by Sotheby's in 1999. How she obtained the present manuscript is unrecorded; it was certainly a non sequitur amongst a collection focusing on important European literary and musical manuscripts. The most likely path seems to be directly from Robert Todd Lincoln. Robert Todd Lincoln, the only child of the Lincoln's to survive into adulthood, was the custodian of his father's papers after the assassination. He is known to have given away a few manuscripts as gifts, including the manuscript of the 1864 election victory speech (on the same paper as the present manuscript) and also including diplomatic gifts. As Mary Ford's family was prominent and politically active it seems likely that their paths would have crossed in the years that Robert Lincoln was U.S. Minister to England, 1889-1893—a period during which Mary Ford was collecting.

Estimate:

US$ 200,000 - 300,000