Page 8 - Swann Galleries - Printed & Manuscript African Americana- Sale 2308 - March 21, 2013

LINCOLN’S EMANCIPATION PROCLAIMATION
“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal”––But as
we all know today; that lofty truth did not apply to all men until eighty five years
of suffering and bloodshed later. The promise of that Declaration was made truth
by Abraham Lincoln on September 22, 1862. Edward Eberstadt’s history of how
Abraham Lincoln actually wrote the Emancipation Proclamation is worth quoting
here, as we celebrate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of that extraordinary
document:
The last week in June of 1862 witnessed the Seven Days’ Battles which
ended all hope of an early end to the war by the quick conquest of
Richmond. As McClellan executed his strateg ic retreat from
Mechanicsville to Harrison’s Bar, Lincoln’s boundless depression found
words when he described himself as being as inconsolable as it was possible
for a human to be and yet live. The tortured President went often to the
War Department building at the southeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue
and Seventeenth Street, to sit in the cipher room of the military telegraph
office and head in hands, await dispatches. In charge of the office was
Major Thomas Thompson Eckert, chief of the War Department Telegraph
staff. Lincoln told Stanton of his visits to Eckert’s office: ‘I have been there
often before breakfast, and in the evening as well, and frequently late at
night, and several times before daylight, to get the latest news from the
army.’ On one of these occasions during the first week of July [1862], he
asked Eckert for some paper, ‘as he wanted to write something special.’
The major gave him at least a quire of special foolscap writing paper.
On this certain day in July, the President seated himself at Eckert’s desk
between the two front windows, took the special foolscap writing paper,
picked up a Gillot small barreled pen, and commenced writing what has
been regarded as the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. Eckert
gives the details: ‘He then sat down and began to write. . .He would look
out of the window a while and then put his pen to paper, but he did not
write much at once. He would study between times and when he had
made up his mind he would put down a line or two, and then sit quiet for
a few minutes. . .On the first day Lincoln did not cover one sheet of his
special writing paper (nor indeed on any subsequent day). . .’ When he was
ready to leave, the President gave Eckert what he had written, and asked
that it be kept under lock and key. Every day or so he returned, asked for
his manuscript, reread what he had written, revised it, and added another
page. According to Eckert, this process continued until about the middle of
July. By this time the telegrapher became impressed with the idea that he
[Lincoln] was engaged upon something of great importance, but did not
know what it was until he had finished the document ‘and then for the first
time he told me that he had been writing an order giving freedom to the
slaves in the South, for the purpose of hastening the end of the war. He said he
had been able to work at my desk more quietly and command his thoughts
better than at the White House, where he was frequently interrupted.