UNPUBLISHED BRITISH CABINET RESPONSE TO LINCOLN’S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, WITH TWO PRELIMINARY PRINTINGS OF THE PROCLAMATION

Sammelband of twelve “Confidential” documents prepared for the British Cabinet. [London], 1860–1863. Folio, 7 3/4 x 12 1/2 in. Contemporary three-quarter forest green morocco over marbled boards, smooth spine in छह compartments, two with red morocco labels gilt-lettered “UNITED STATES” and “CORRESPONDENCE / & MEMORANDA / CIVIL WAR. / 1860 TO 1863,” upper compartment gilt-lettered “CONFIDENTIAL.” Provenance: James F. Barnett; Grand Rapids Public Library, 1929 (bookplate to front pastedown).

An important and apparently unrecorded compilation illuminating the British government’s immediate and confidential response to Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. At its heart is a “Memorandum,” dated 1 October 1862 and marked “Confidential,” which records in unusually candid terms how the British Cabinet assessed the military, political, and above all social implications of Lincoln’s September 22 decree. As preserved here, the volume brings together not only that unpublished reaction, but also the text of the Proclamation itself as transmitted to Earl Russell by Mr. Stuart on 23 September 1862 and reproduced from the National Intelligencer— thus preserving, within a single Cabinet working volume, both the American measure and the British official response to it.

The memorandum is remarkable for the severity and sophistication of its analysis. Opening with the assertion that affairs in the United States must be viewed under “three aspects—military, political, and social,” it first judges the military balance of the war in terms unexpectedly favorable to the Confederacy, concluding that because the North wages an aggressive war and the South a defensive one, “the result must be considered as favorable to the Southern cause.” It then turns to the political problem of subduing the seceded states, doubting that Northern victory alone could restore durable peace and warning instead of a prolonged and “smouldering civil war,” in which “the arts of peace will be neglected, and the fields left waste.”

Most extraordinary, however, is the memorandum’s sustained treatment of emancipation itself. The writer insists that Lincoln’s measure should be called not a “Proclamation” but a “Decree,” because it purportedly “abrogates the existing law, and even the Constitution of the United States altogether.” From there the argument expands into one of the most arresting passages in the volume: the suggestion that compensated emancipation on a vast scale would have been preferable, and that Europe would have applauded—indeed materially supported—such a solution. The text declares that had Congress offered £100,000,000 sterling to compensate Southern slaveholders, “Europe would have applauded,” citing the British Parliament’s own emancipation indemnity as precedent; even twice that amount, the writer argues, “would have been a cheap outlay” compared with the bloodshed already endured. This passage is particularly notable for revealing that, at least in this confidential analysis, British official thinking was prepared to imagine a massive transatlantic compensation scheme as a path to abolition.

The memorandum goes on to criticize the Proclamation’s limited reach with striking bluntness. Because it freed enslaved people only in states “in rebellion against the United States,” while leaving slavery untouched in loyal slave states, the author condemns the measure as fundamentally inconsistent: “The right to hold slaves is made the reward of loyalty; the emancipation of slaves is not granted to the claims of humanity, but inflicted as a punishment on their owners.” The writer further speculates that the decree would create three classes of Black Americans—those freed by compensated emancipation, those freed by the January 1 decree in rebellious states, and those left enslaved in loyal states—thus underscoring the Cabinet author’s view that emancipation had been framed as a wartime expedient rather than a universal moral act.

Altogether, the volume offers an unusually revealing view of how Lincoln’s Proclamation was read at the highest levels of the British state in the critical autumn of 1862. It shows the British Cabinet engaging the document not merely as American news, but as a world-historical event with military, constitutional, diplomatic, and moral implications. The survival here of the confidential memorandum together with the preliminary printing of the Proclamation itself gives the collection exceptional documentary force.

Both as an unpublished witness to British opinion and as a major artifact of the international history of emancipation, it is a singular and important compilation, worthy of the most advanced collections.

Complete listing of contents, each paginated individually: 

1. Memorandum of Instances in which Belligerents have enforced the right of Searching Neutral Vessels on the High Seas for the Persons or Property of their Enemies. 1780-1855. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. December 3, 1861. [2] + [1]-[24] pp. 

2. Correspondence Relative to the Civil War in the United States. November 1860 to January 1862. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. January 19. 1862. [2] vii, [1]-194 pp.

3. Extracts from Writers on the Law of Nations, and from Treaties between the United States and Barbary Powers, bearing on the Question of the Rights of Belligerents in Neutral Ports. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. 24 January 1862. [2] [1]-26+ [2] pp.

4. Correspondence Respecting the Withdrawal by the Government of the United States of Mr. Bunch’s Exequatur as Her Majesty’s Consul at Charleston. April 1861 to January 1862. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. January 25, 1862. iv, [1]-33 pp. 

5. Correspondence Respecting the Seizure of Messrs. Mason, Slidell, McFarland, and Eustis, from on Board the Royal Mail-Packet “Trent,” by the Commander of the United States Ship of War “San Jacinto”. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. January 30, 1862. v, [1]-67 pp. 

6. North America. Correspondence Respecting International Maritime Law. May to December 1861. With Appendix. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. January 30, 1862. v, [1]-55 pp. 

7. Part II. Correspondence Relative to the Civil War in North America. January 8 to February 1, 1862. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. 3 February, 1862. [ii], [1]-26 pp. 

8. Correspondence Respecting the Steamers “Nashville” and “Tuscarora” at Southampton. September 1862 to February 1862. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. February 5, 1862. iv, [1]-45 pp. 

9. Papers Relating to the Blockade of the Ports of the Confederate States. May 1861 to February 1862. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. February 17, 1862. [vi], [ 1]-156

10. Memorandum relative to Blockades. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. March 5, 1862. [1]- 15 pp. Signed in type by A.S. Green. 

11. Memorandum. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. October 1, 1862. [1]- 11 pp. 

12. Correspondence Respecting the Civil War in the United States of North America. May 1862 to February 1863. Printed for the use of the Cabinet. February 27, 1863. [iv], [1]-71 pp. 

[African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation] [Manuscripts, Documents, Letters, Ephemera, Signatures, Autographs] [Civil War, Union, Confederate] [Politics, Books, Government Documents] 

A complete transcription of the "Memorandum" is available upon request.