"Our One Common Country" author talk in Stratford, CT

[David Lockmiller]

(08-20-2014 08:09 PM)LincolnToddFan Wrote:  Never, at any time or anywhere in over 30 years of reading about Mary Lincoln, have I ever heard that she opposed the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln scholar, Professor Allen C. Guelzo, wrote in his book, “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America,” Simon & Schuster, Copyright 2004, 2005 (paperback edition), pages 204 -05:

The next day, New Year’s Day, dawned with “scare a cloud . . . to obscure the brilliant rays of light emitted from the great alchemist.” Lincoln had “never retired that night,” and early in the morning, he walked down the corridor from the family quarters of the White House to his office and wrote out his final revision with Chase’s closing.

He covered three long sheets of paper, saving himself the trouble of writing in one instance by pasting two paragraphs from a previously printed circular onto the first page as an insertion. But he would wait for an official copy to be made before signing it, as he only did on state documents, with his full name – Abraham Lincoln. A clerk was summoned to take the written draft over to the State Department for it to be engrossed, and in the meantime Lincoln ate his usual meager breakfast (“an egg, a piece of toast coffee & c,” according to John Hay). Mary Lincoln (who, according to her son Robert “was very much opposed to the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation”) appeared in the doorway, “inquiring in her quick sharp way, ‘Well, what do you intend doing?’” Lincoln only looked upwards, “as to heaven,” and replied, “I am a man under orders, I cannot do otherwise.”

Secretary of State Seward arrived with the engrossed copy for Lincoln’s signature just after midmorning: But here matters stalled. With his lawyer’s eye, Lincoln noticed that the closing subscription in the engrossed copy contained an error. It read: “In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my name and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.” The draft had omitted the usual subscription form, leaving that technicality to be supplied by the State-Department’s copyist, who dutifully wrote it out in what he thought was the desired form. But it was not. Setting his name to a document in testimony was what he did in the subscription of treaties; setting his hand was what he did in witness whereof to presidential proclamations—calling out the first troops, announcing the blockade, setting aside days of fasting and prayer—and that was what he wanted here. He could not let this error pass, not with this Proclamation, which would be scrutinized down to the last syllable like no other document he had written in his life. And so Seward and the botched copy were sent back to the State Department for a corrected one.

Professor Michael Burlingame published his material containing the very same Mary Lincoln quote in 2008, in “Abraham Lincoln: A Life,” Vol. Two, pages 468-69. This was four years after Professor Guelzo’s book was first published in 2004. I prefer the Professor Allen C. Guelzo version. It is much more informative.

And, I never quite understood Lincoln’s shortened reply to Mary’s question ("Well, what do you intend doing?") in Professor Burlingame’s book: “I am a man under orders, I cannot do otherwise.” By contrast, Professor Guelzo wrote above: Lincoln only looked upwards, “as to heaven,” and replied, “I am a man under orders, I cannot do otherwise.”

This was meant to inform Mary Todd Lincoln that President Abraham Lincoln was doing God’s work.

I do not have access to the footnote source reference used by Professor Guelzo since I used Google books and the footnote material was not available to me.