Lincoln, Abraham | President Lincoln's de facto Declaration of War

Lincoln, Abraham

By the President of the United States. A Proclamation. 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. [Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 15 April 1861]

Printed circular (256 x 204 mm) on a bifolium of wove paper, the text of Lincoln's Proclamation printed on the recto of the first leaf, the other three pages blank; very lightly browned at margin edges, pencilled date ("April 15 1861") at head of first page. Blue morocco portfolio gilt.

Abraham Lincoln's first Presidential Proclamation—the Proclamation Calling Militia and Convening Congress—and the President's de facto Declaration of War. 

Precipitated by the capture of Fort Sumter by Confederate troops led by P. G. T. Beauregard two days earlier, Lincoln's momentous call for troops was made just six weeks after he has assumed the presidency. And since his administration did not recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation warranting a formal declaration, he relied on the Militia Act of 1795, passed in the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion, for the legal authority for his order. Carefully echoing the prescriptions of the Militia Act in his text, 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." In expressing his desire for "the perpetuity of popular government," Lincoln also foreshadows his vision, expressed two years later in the Gettysburg Address, of "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Lincoln's Proclamation was widely printed in newspapers across the country, finding wide support in the North, but hurrying the South to secession. But this State Department circular was the first and only official separate printing of Lincoln's fateful order. Very rare: This official printing is not recorded in any of the standard bibliographies. We are aware of only two other copies: one in the National Archives and the other in a private collection. The Library of Congress, which holds Lincoln's autograph draft of the Proclamation, does not have a copy.

REFERENCE

Celebration of My Country 195; Collected Writings of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Basler, 4:331–33; cf. William L. Miller, President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman (New York, 2008), pp. 91–95