Lincoln, Abraham:

$10,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

PROCLAMATION OF AMNESTY. THE FOLLOWING PROCLAMATION IS APPENDED TO THE MESSAGE. PROCLAMATION [caption title]. An exceedingly rare separate printing - perhaps by a military field press - of President Abraham Lincoln's December 1863 presidential proclamation offering amnesty to citizens of the Confederacy, providing they take an oath that they "will abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves" (i.e. the Emancipation Proclamation). When the number of persons in any state taking the oath reached ten percent of the number of voters in 1860, this group of loyal voters could form a state government that could be recognized by the President. The Amnesty Proclamation was issued with President Lincoln's third Annual Message to Congress (i.e. State of the Union Address), on December 8, 1863. It was appended (per the language in the title here) to the official printing of that address, but also printed separately.The present printing, almost certainly executed in the weeks after Lincoln's State of the Union, was likely hastily composed from the text of the official printing of the proclamation. The work carries no imprint information of any kind and bears the hallmarks of a military field press printing.Toward the close of 1863, with the Confederate Army in full retreat, discussions in Congress centered on how to restore the Southern states to the Union. "The crisis which threatened to divide the friends

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