Description:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD
(1801 - 1872) American politician and Lincoln's Secretary of State, responsible for preventing official European recognition of the Confederacy. Fine content L.S. as Secretary of State, 3pp. 8vo., Washington, Oct. 10, 1862 to Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. Marked "Unofficial" he writes, in full: "I have received your note of yesterday, and in compliance with the intimation made to you in Cabinet to day, have taken into consideration the draft of a letter on the execution of the slave trade Treaty with Great Britain which accompanied it. You will notice that I have made in pencil a few slight additions to the draft. If you should deem them acceptable, my impression is that the letter would better answer our purpose." On April 7, 1862 Lincoln signed a treaty with Great Britain for the suppression of the African slave trade. Congress ratified the treaty on May 10, 1862. In response, Congress passed an act on July 11, 1862 authorizing the appointment of a judge and an arbitrator for New York, Sierra Leone and at the Cape of Good Hope to execute the terms of the treaty. As in the past, the Navy would have been the chief enforcer of the treaty and Welles was tasked with supplying the ships and sailors necessary. In his Second Annual Message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, Lincoln reported that the treaty was in operation with a good prospect for success. In February 1863, Congress allowed for an expansion of the treaty calling for naval patrols on the coasts of Madagascar, Puerto Rico and San Domingo. The treaty was negotiated in the midst of improving relations with Great Britain, and only two weeks prior to this letter, both Seward and Welles heard the reading of the first draft of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation that would go into effect on January 1, 1863. That act convinced both Britain and France not to recognize the Confederacy as Lincoln had now cast the struggle into a war on slavery. Usual folds, light uneven toning, else very good.

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December 9, 2011 11:00 AM EST
Stamford, CT, US

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