Lincoln's Gamble: The Tumultuous Six Months that Gave America the Emancipation

[Eva Elisabeth]

Thanks Rob, Roger, and David especially for adding this:

(09-04-2014 12:58 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  “The President is occupied on the Proclamation. He will stand firm. He said to me that it was hard to drive him from a position which he had once taken.”
[...Abraham Lincoln to Charles Sumner...eight days before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.]
The President says he would not stop the Proclamation if he could, and he could not if he would.”

[...Abraham Lincoln to Charles Sumner five days before President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.]

What Carpenter wrote reads as follows:
P.87:
"The final Proclamation was signed on New-Year's Day, 1863. The President remarked to Mr. Colfax, the same evening, that the signature appeared somewhat tremulous and uneven. 'Not,' said he, 'because of any uncertainty or hesitation on my part; but it was just after the public reception, and three hours hand-shaking is not calculated to improve a man's chirography.' Then changing his tone, he added: 'The South had fair warning, that if they did not return to their duty, I should strike at this pillar of their strength. The promise must now be kept, and I shall never recall one word.'”

P.269/270:
"The roll containing the Emancipation Proclamation was taken to Mr. Lincoln at noon on the first day of January, 1863, by Secretary Seward and his son Frederick. As it lay unrolled before him, Mr. Lincoln took a pen, dipped it in the ink, moved his hand to the place for the signature, held it a moment, then removed his hand and dropped the pen. After a little hesitation he again took up the pen and went through the same movement as before. Mr. Lincoln then turned to Mr. Seward and said: 'I have been shaking hands since nine o'clock this morning, and my right arm is almost paralyzed. If my name ever goes into history it will be for this act, and my whole soul is in it. If my hand trembles when I sign the Proclamation, all who examine the document hereafter will say, 'He hesitated.'' He then turned to the table, took up the pen again, and slowly, firmly, wrote Abraham Lincoln, with which the whole world is now familiar."

(09-04-2014 11:39 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  "The signature looks a little tremulous," Lincoln admitted to Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax "and other friends that night," but "not because of any uncertainty or hesitation on my part." It was rather exhaustion: "Three hours' hand-shaking is not calculated to improve a man's chirography." Whatever the state of his hand, "my resolution was firm. . . . Not one word of it will I ever recall."

Thanks, David - could you possibly check what the original source for Lincoln's verbatim words is? Schuyler Colfax perhaps? Many thanks for any further info on this!

Just to assure the Seward quote in my previous post is correct:
   
Well then, there are three, perhaps four (depending on the source for the quote above) different accounts that similarly claim firmness. Is it likely Sumner would have made this just up in his contemporaneous correspondence? As for the other gentlemen, since their wording, even if not literally similar, sounds quite alike - would Seward have copied from Carpenter while knowing this was wrong (as Seward had been present)?

So, despite the mysterious Florence W. Stanley, do we yet have any other hint or evidence for him not being firm at that time?