Union blockade proclamations (US, 1861)

The Union blockade proclamations (US, 1861) are President Lincoln's proclamations of 19 and 27 April 1861 declaring a blockade of the ports of the seceded states, the legal foundation of the Union blockade of the Confederacy (1861-1865). Their significance as legal authority lies in the choice of instrument: by proclaiming a blockade under the law of nations rather than closing the ports under municipal law, the Union invoked a belligerent right, with consequences for the Confederacy's status, neutral powers, and the reach of executive war power.

Provisions

The proclamation of 19 April 1861 declared a blockade of the ports of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, "in pursuance of the laws of the United States, and of the law of Nations in such case provided"; the proclamation of 27 April extended it to Virginia and North Carolina. Vessels attempting to enter or leave the blockaded ports were to be warned, and on a second attempt captured and sent in for prize adjudication. The proclamations thereby engaged the whole apparatus of prize law, the effectiveness requirement of the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law (1856), and the law of contraband and neutral rights.

Trigger and legal consequences

Blockade is a belligerent right exercisable only in war, so the proclamations implicitly conceded that a state of war existed and that the Confederacy possessed belligerent character, a tension with the Union's insistence that secession was mere rebellion. Britain drew the consequence, recognising Confederate belligerency by neutrality proclamation in May 1861, which the Union resented but which followed from the blockade's own logic. The alternative course, closing the ports by statute as domestic legislation, was pressed by some in Congress but would have made every seizure of a neutral vessel an act neutrals need not respect; blockade, once effective, bound them. The proclamations' legality against the objection that only Congress could initiate war measures was upheld five to four in The Prize Cases (United States Supreme Court, 1863).

Employment history and effects

The proclamations sustained a four-year interdiction that grew from a limited force into an effective cordon and generated a large body of prize jurisprudence, including the Civil War continuous-voyage condemnations. They are an early instance of presidential action during an armed conflict followed by congressional legislation. Later delegations, including the Trading with the Enemy Act (United States, 1917), rest on their own constitutional and statutory bases; the blockade proclamations did not create a general modern emergency power.

Current status and evidentiary limits

The proclamations of 19 April 1861 and 27 April 1861 are expired historical measures. The Prize Cases later sustained prize adjudication during the conflict; it did not recognise Confederate sovereignty or create a general peacetime sanctions power.

See also

Union blockade of the Confederacy (1861-1865) · The Prize Cases (United States Supreme Court, 1863) · Prize law and prize courts · Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law (1856) · Economic statecraft

Sources

• Lincoln Proclamation 81.
• Lincoln Proclamation 82.
• United States Supreme Court, The Prize Cases.
• US Office of the Historian, Confederate ports blockade.