LINCOLN, ABRAHAM | Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress in the National Intelligencer, Vol. LXII, No. 9152. Washington: [W. W. Seaton], Tuesday, April 16, 1861

Property from the Eric C. Caren Collection

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM

Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress in the National Intelligencer, Vol. LXII, No. 9152. Washington: [W. W. Seaton], Tuesday, April 16, 1861

Large folio, 4 pages (23 1/2 x 19 in.; 595 x 485 mm) on a bifolium of wove paper, several woodcut vignettes among advertisements, text in six columns; a little soiling at folds, some minor marginal tears and fraying. The consignor has independently obtained a letter of authenticity from PSA that will accompany the lot.

A front-page, next-day printing of Lincoln's de facto Declaration of War: "Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law: Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed."

Since the Lincoln administration did not recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation warranting a formal declaration, the present proclamation served as Lincoln's virtual declaration of war. This call for 75,000 militia, at a time when the Regular Army numbered little more than 16,000 officers and men, reveals Lincoln's resolve to preserve the Union: "I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured. I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country."

The proximate cause of the proclamation—the capture of Fort Sumter by Confederate troops led by P. G. T. Beauregard—is also reported on the first page of this issue. Other news in the issue that illuminates the fragile state of the Union in mid-April 1861 includes reports from Virginia's secession convention, as well as President Lincoln's reply, 13 April 1861, to a committee of that convention explaining his intended policy towards the seceded states, which quotes his inaugural address.