{"id":926,"date":"2013-06-28T20:26:40","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T20:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=926"},"modified":"2016-06-20T15:43:01","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T15:43:01","slug":"presidential-proclamation-april-19-1861","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/presidential-proclamation-april-19-1861\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Proclamation (April 19, 1861)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>Ranking<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #0000ff; font-size: 36px;\">#42<\/span> on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/40399\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States &#8230;\u00a0have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States, and of the law of Nations, in such case provided.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Audio Version<\/h3>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player?url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F120712816&visual=true\"><\/iframe>\n<h3>On This Date<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/today_in_history?q=panel\/this_date\/1861-04-19\">HD Daily Report, April 19, 1861<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelincolnlog.org\/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&amp;day=1861-04-19\" target=\"_blank\">The Lincoln Log, April 19, 1861<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Custom Map<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps\/ms?msid=214923210427089848626.0004def4e79e2ae545ca4&amp;msa=0&amp;ll=38.905662,-77.012444&amp;spn=0.053634,0.09553&amp;iwloc=lyrftr:msid:214923210427089848626.0004def4e79e2ae545ca4,0004e072ea29ca63d3637,,,0,-63\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3463\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/files\/2013\/06\/4.19-proclamation.png\" alt=\"4.19 proclamation\" width=\"416\" height=\"463\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps\/ms?msid=214923210427089848626.0004def4e79e2ae545ca4&amp;msa=0&amp;ll=38.905662,-77.012444&amp;spn=0.053634,0.09553&amp;iwloc=lyrftr:msid:214923210427089848626.0004def4e79e2ae545ca4,0004e072ea29ca63d3637,,,0,-63\" target=\"_blank\">View in larger map<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cIt is not surprising that many observers at home and abroad should have regarded Lincoln as a man patently out of his depth in a crisis of such magnitude. To the London\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>, for instance, he seemed weak, dilatory, and destined to be more of a follower than a leader in the conduct of the government. Yet the very confusion of circumstances, the very uniqueness and urgency of the problems confronting him, amounted to a slate wiped clean, offering an extraordinary opportunity for the exercise of leadership. How did Lincoln respond?\u00a0<em>Decisively<\/em>, beyond question. Within the first three weeks following the attack on Fort Sumter: He issued proclamations of a blockade, dated April 19 and 27, that were tantamount to declaring the existence of a state of civil war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Don E. Fehrenbacher, <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/spo.2629860.0009.103\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cLincoln\u2019s Wartime Leadership: The first Hundred Days,<\/a>\u201d <em>Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association <\/em>9, no. 1 (1987), 2-18.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile these actions may have bent the Constitution slightly, more serious extraconstitutional steps were also taken in the ten weeks between the bombardment of Sumter and the convening of Congress in July. Lincoln acted unilaterally in the belief that his emergency measures would be endorsed retrospectively by the House and Senate and thus made constitutional. On April 19, he declared his intention to blockade ports in the seven seceded states; a week later he extended it to cover Virginia and North Carolina. This he justified as a response to the Confederacy\u2019s announcement on April 17 that it would issue letters of marque, authorizing privateers to seize Union shipping. In the momentous cabinet session of April 14, a majority agreed with Gideon Welles, who maintained that a blockade was more appropriate for a war between two nations rather than for a rebellion. Better to simply close the ports in the seceded states, argued the navy\u00a0secretary, who understandably feared that the Union fleet was too small and antiquated to enforce a blockade. Bates believed that a blockade was \u2018an act of war, which a nation cannot wage against itself\u2019 but that closing ports was \u2018altogether different.\u2019 Seward, however, countered that closing Southern ports might provoke foreign nations to declare war. Lincoln at first sided with Welles, but Seward took him \u2018off to ride, explained his own view,\u2019 and the president gave in. The following day he told the cabinet and \u2018that we could not afford to have two wars on our hands at once\u2019 and therefore he would declare a blockade.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; Michael Burlingame,\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.knox.edu\/documents\/pdfs\/LincolnStudies\/Burlingame,%20Vol%202,%20Chap%2023.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Abraham Lincoln: A Life<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 23 \u00a0(PDF), 2459-2460.<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #000000;\">NOTE TO READERS<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new \u201cUnderstanding Lincoln\u201d online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford&#8217;s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at <a href=\"http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Searchable Text<\/span><\/h3>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">April 19, 1861<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">By the President of the United States of America:<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">A Proclamation.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed therein conformably to that provision of the Constitution which requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States:<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">And whereas a combination of persons engaged in such insurrection, have threatened to grant pretended letters of marque to authorize the bearers thereof to commit assaults on the lives, vessels, and property of good citizens of the country lawfully engaged in commerce on the high seas, and in waters of the United States: And whereas an Executive Proclamation has been already issued, requiring the persons engaged in these disorderly proceedings to desist therefrom, calling out a militia force for the purpose of repressing the same, and convening Congress in extraordinary session, to deliberate and determine thereon:<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, with a view to the same purposes before mentioned, and to the protection of the public peace, and the lives and property of quiet and orderly citizens pursuing their lawful occupations, until Congress shall have assembled and deliberated on the said unlawful proceedings, or until the same shall have ceased, have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States, and of the law of Nations, in such case provided. For this purpose a competent force will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit of vessels from the ports aforesaid. If, therefore, with a view to violate such blockade, a vessel shall approach, or shall attempt to leave either of the said ports, she will be duly warned by the Commander of one of the blockading vessels, who will endorse on her register the fact and date of such warning, and if the same vessel shall again attempt to enter or leave the blockaded port, she will be captured and sent to the nearest convenient port, for such proceedings against her and her cargo as prize, as may be deemed advisable.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">And I hereby proclaim and declare that if any person, under the pretended authority of the said States, or under any other pretense, shall molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo on board of her, such person will be held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Done at the City of Washington, this nineteenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">[L.S.]<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">ABRAHAM LINCOLN<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">By the President:<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ranking #42 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript &#8220;Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States &#8230;\u00a0have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States, and of the law of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10859],"tags":[11636,10867,11630,11625,11669,10861,10895,10862],"class_list":["post-926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-savior-of-the-union","tag-diplomacy","tag-executive-order","tag-military-affairs","tag-nationalism","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-public","tag-war-powers","tag-wartime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=926"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4470,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/926\/revisions\/4470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}