Details
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, President. Autograph letter signed ("A. Lincoln") as President, to Major General [Benjamin Franklin] Butler, Washington, D.C., 6 November 1862. One page, 4to, on imprinted "Executive Mansion" stationery.
JUST TWO MONTHS AFTER ISSUING THE PRELIMINARY EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, LINCOLN ASKS FOR DETAILS ON "FREE BLACK LABOR" IN OCCUPIED LOUISIANA
A compelling letter to "beast" Butler (the controversial military governor of Union-occupied New Orleans) in which Lincoln seems excited to learn of the Louisiana planters' new use of free black labor, and inquires about the progress in holding elections for Senators, Representatives and other officials. "My dear Sir, This morning the Secretary of the Treasury [Salmon P. Chase] read to me a letter of yours to him. He read to me, at the same time, one from Mr. [George S.] Dennison (I think) at New Orleans. I was much interested by the information in one of them that some of the planters were making arrangements with their negroes to pay them wages. Please write me to what extent, so far as you know, this is being done. Also what, if anything, is being done by Mr. [John E.] Bouligny, or others, about electing members of Congress, I am anxious to hear on both points...."
The Union had occupied New Orleans in May 1862 after its defenses were reduced by Farragut's fleet (see lot ) and General Butler became military governor. During the next seven months "Beast" Butler "exhibited a genius for arousing adverse criticism at home and embarrassing his government in Europe" (Boatner, p. 109). Butler, replying to Lincoln's letter on November 28 reported rather jubilantly that "Colonel John W. Shaffer "has put up to be forwarded to you a [barrel] of the first sugar ever made by free black labor in Louisiana....The planters seem to have been struck with a sort of judicial blindness, and some of them so deluded have abandoned their crops rather than work them with free labor." Butler went on to report, concerning the elections to be held on November 12, that one candidate, Dr. Thomas Cottman, "had voluntarily signed the Ordinance of Secession....and as the Doctor had never by any public act testified his abnegation of that act....I thought it would be best that the Government should not be put to the scandal of having a person so situated elected, although the Doctor may be a good Union man now...."
Lincoln must have been disappointed at Butler's news that some planters had abandoned their crops rather than pay wages to their former slaves. Having issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation in July, he was anxious to allay growing fears in the northern and border states that their farms and cities would be overwhelmed by a tide of destitute freed former slaves emigrating from the South. Lincoln was hopeful that he could counter these fears by assuring Northern voters that freed slaves would have no incentive to leave their home areas because their former owners would willingly pay them wages, at least until a full-scale colonization scheme could be made operative; hence his hopeful expression of interest in the use of free black labor in the present letter. The question is the subject of a long section in Lincoln's message to Congress of 1 December (see Basler, 5:535-537). This letter is published (from a 1917 edition of the correspondence of Benjamin F. Butler) in Basler, 5:487-488 and fn. (giving excerpts from Butler's response).
Provenance:
Elsie O. & Philip D. Sang Foundation (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 20 June 1979, lot 762, illustrated).
JUST TWO MONTHS AFTER ISSUING THE PRELIMINARY EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, LINCOLN ASKS FOR DETAILS ON "FREE BLACK LABOR" IN OCCUPIED LOUISIANA
A compelling letter to "beast" Butler (the controversial military governor of Union-occupied New Orleans) in which Lincoln seems excited to learn of the Louisiana planters' new use of free black labor, and inquires about the progress in holding elections for Senators, Representatives and other officials. "My dear Sir, This morning the Secretary of the Treasury [Salmon P. Chase] read to me a letter of yours to him. He read to me, at the same time, one from Mr. [George S.] Dennison (I think) at New Orleans. I was much interested by the information in one of them that some of the planters were making arrangements with their negroes to pay them wages. Please write me to what extent, so far as you know, this is being done. Also what, if anything, is being done by Mr. [John E.] Bouligny, or others, about electing members of Congress, I am anxious to hear on both points...."
The Union had occupied New Orleans in May 1862 after its defenses were reduced by Farragut's fleet (see lot ) and General Butler became military governor. During the next seven months "Beast" Butler "exhibited a genius for arousing adverse criticism at home and embarrassing his government in Europe" (Boatner, p. 109). Butler, replying to Lincoln's letter on November 28 reported rather jubilantly that "Colonel John W. Shaffer "has put up to be forwarded to you a [barrel] of the first sugar ever made by free black labor in Louisiana....The planters seem to have been struck with a sort of judicial blindness, and some of them so deluded have abandoned their crops rather than work them with free labor." Butler went on to report, concerning the elections to be held on November 12, that one candidate, Dr. Thomas Cottman, "had voluntarily signed the Ordinance of Secession....and as the Doctor had never by any public act testified his abnegation of that act....I thought it would be best that the Government should not be put to the scandal of having a person so situated elected, although the Doctor may be a good Union man now...."
Lincoln must have been disappointed at Butler's news that some planters had abandoned their crops rather than pay wages to their former slaves. Having issued the preliminary emancipation proclamation in July, he was anxious to allay growing fears in the northern and border states that their farms and cities would be overwhelmed by a tide of destitute freed former slaves emigrating from the South. Lincoln was hopeful that he could counter these fears by assuring Northern voters that freed slaves would have no incentive to leave their home areas because their former owners would willingly pay them wages, at least until a full-scale colonization scheme could be made operative; hence his hopeful expression of interest in the use of free black labor in the present letter. The question is the subject of a long section in Lincoln's message to Congress of 1 December (see Basler, 5:535-537). This letter is published (from a 1917 edition of the correspondence of Benjamin F. Butler) in Basler, 5:487-488 and fn. (giving excerpts from Butler's response).
Provenance:
Elsie O. & Philip D. Sang Foundation (sale, Sotheby Parke Bernet, 20 June 1979, lot 762, illustrated).