"in the year of ... the Independence of the ..."

[samgrant]

If you wondered about the title of this thread, it has to do with Presidential Proclamations, and a particlular manner of reference to the date.

I just happened to notice that in Lincoln's Presidential proclamation of April 15, 1861, calling for seventy-five thousand troops to suppress those obstructing the laws of the United States, he not only used the "year of our Lord" phraseology, but also the year "of the Independence of the United States".

I had never noticed this before, so I researched it a bit and found that all of Lincoln's proclamations included this language. For instance, his EP closes "Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh."

First I thought this must be one of those Lincolnesque kinds of things that AL was prone to, he being a big fan of the D of I, but then I found that none other than George Washington used this phraseology in our Constitution: "done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth".

Well, tho George may have started it, I found that it is done according to the "Code of Federal Regulations", (don't know when that started) Title 1, Part 19, which covers Executive Orders and Presidential Proclamations.

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/11feb20051500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2005/janqtr/pdf/1cfr19.1.pdf

Hm, well now I wondered how old Jefferson Davis closed his proclamations, and what kind of phraseology he used.

I found this comparing Davis' and Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamations, in which JD doesn't use the "Independence" phrase at all:

http://biblestudyplanet.com/holidays...iving/t22.aspx

So I wondered if he ever used it, and the only thing I could find was this, not a proclamation, where he uses "Given under my hand at the city of Montgomery this 27th day of February, A.D. 1861, and of the Independence of the Confederate States the eighty-fifth."

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/l022761.htm

Ha! News to the world that the Confederacy was established in 1776!

Apparently, however, these so-called Confederate States of America, were not all on the same page. The only other examples I could find which used " and of the Independence of the Confederate States" were these:

A footnote indicating that Governor A. B. Moore used the phrase, but implied, in 1861, that the "Confederate States" were but one year old.

http://library.uwa.edu/Ala_Room/FAid...Collection.asp

And,

This from the "Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Mississippi, Called Session at Columbus,
February and March, 1865", in which we find that the "Confederate States" were now 5 years old.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/msfeb65/msfeb65.html

There are a couple other references I found, all concerning something called the "Confederate States Almanac".

What to make of this? I have to wonder why did Davis, as far as can be found by me, use the phrase only the one time, and that not in a "Presidential Proclamation", but in a, from hindsight, seemingly taunting letter to a President Elect of the U.S.? Perhaps it was meant sincerely by Davis, and he thought that this new bumpkin of a president would reply in kind?

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