Details
[LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President]. HAY, JOHN, Assistant Secretary to the President. Autograph letter signed in full to a family friend ("My dear Miss Jay"), Executive Mansion, [Washington, D.C.], 20 July 1862. 7 pages, 8vo.
"WHEN NEXT HE SPEAKS": HINTS OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
A revealing letter of the President's 24-year-old secretary, entirely on the issue of slavery, hinting at the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln had long contemplated, but finally proposed to his cabinet two days later, on 22 July. Hay is outspoken in his contempt for George MacClellan and his failed Peninsula campaign: "...What a wretched conclusion of all our little General's boasting addresses and orders have we seen on the bloody banks of the Chickahominy! Sad as is the result to himself and the country...How gloriously General [David] Hunter has justified my statement that the future would prove his soundness in hatred of Slavery....Although the President repudiated his order...The President himself has been, out of pure devotion to what he considers the best interests of humanity, the bulwark of the institution he abhors [slavery], for a year. But he will not conserve slavery much longer. When next he speaks in relation to this defiant and ungrateful villainy it will be with no uncertain sound. Even now he speaks more boldly and sternly to slaveholders than to the world." Then, Hay confesses meaningfully that, "If I have been impatient of his delay I am so no longer...."
General Hunter had commanded a Union army which seized Fort Pulaski, Georgia, from the rebels on 11 April. The next day, Hunter issued an order liberating all slaves in Union hands, and less than a month later, on 9 May, extended his order to cover all Union-controlled territory in the Department of the South, which he commanded. President Lincoln, to the outrage of abolitionists throughout the north, repealed Hunter's orders on 19 May, arguing that Hunter had no such authority, constitutionally, to eliminate slavery. Lincoln, already contemplating his carefully planned attack on the "institution," presented a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet on 22 July. On 19 September the Presidential decree was issued, to take effect on 1 January 1863.
Provenance:
Elsie O. and Philip D. Sang Foundation (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 3 June 1980, lot 934).
"WHEN NEXT HE SPEAKS": HINTS OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
A revealing letter of the President's 24-year-old secretary, entirely on the issue of slavery, hinting at the forthcoming Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln had long contemplated, but finally proposed to his cabinet two days later, on 22 July. Hay is outspoken in his contempt for George MacClellan and his failed Peninsula campaign: "...What a wretched conclusion of all our little General's boasting addresses and orders have we seen on the bloody banks of the Chickahominy! Sad as is the result to himself and the country...How gloriously General [David] Hunter has justified my statement that the future would prove his soundness in hatred of Slavery....Although the President repudiated his order...The President himself has been, out of pure devotion to what he considers the best interests of humanity, the bulwark of the institution he abhors [slavery], for a year. But he will not conserve slavery much longer. When next he speaks in relation to this defiant and ungrateful villainy it will be with no uncertain sound. Even now he speaks more boldly and sternly to slaveholders than to the world." Then, Hay confesses meaningfully that, "If I have been impatient of his delay I am so no longer...."
General Hunter had commanded a Union army which seized Fort Pulaski, Georgia, from the rebels on 11 April. The next day, Hunter issued an order liberating all slaves in Union hands, and less than a month later, on 9 May, extended his order to cover all Union-controlled territory in the Department of the South, which he commanded. President Lincoln, to the outrage of abolitionists throughout the north, repealed Hunter's orders on 19 May, arguing that Hunter had no such authority, constitutionally, to eliminate slavery. Lincoln, already contemplating his carefully planned attack on the "institution," presented a preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation to the cabinet on 22 July. On 19 September the Presidential decree was issued, to take effect on 1 January 1863.
Provenance:
Elsie O. and Philip D. Sang Foundation (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 3 June 1980, lot 934).