The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, v6

TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: The Secretary of State has...

“Re­solved, That the Sec­re­tary of State be re­quest­ed to com­mu­ni­cate to this House, if not, in his judg­ment, in­com­pat­ible with the pub­lic in­ter­est, why our Min­is­ter in New Grana­da has not pre­sent­ed his cre­den­tials to the ac­tu­al gov­ern­ment of that coun­try; al­so the rea­sons for which Senor Muril­lo is not rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States as the diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mos­quera gov­ern­ment of that coun­try; al­so, what ne­go­ti­ations have been had, if any, with Gen­er­al Her­ran as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Os­pina’s gov­ern­ment in New Grana­da since it went in­to ex­is­tence.”

On the 12th day of De­cem­ber, 1846, a treaty of ami­ty, peace, and con­cord was con­clud­ed be­tween the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica and the Re­pub­lic of New Grana­da, which is still in force. On the 7th day of De­cem­ber, 1847, Gen­er­al Pe­dro Al­can­tara Her­ran, who had been du­ly ac­cred­it­ed, was re­ceived here as the en­voy ex­traor­di­nary and min­is­ter plenipo­ten­tiary of that, re­pub­lic. On the 30th day of Au­gust, 1849, Senor Don Rafael Ri­vas was re­ceived by this gov­ern­ment as charge d’af­faires of the same re­pub­lic. On the 5th day of De­cem­ber, 1851, a con­sular con­ven­tion was con­clud­ed be­tween that re­pub­lic and the Unit­ed States, which treaty was signed on be­half of the Re­pub­lic of Grana­da by the same Senor Ri­vas. This treaty is still in force. On the 27th of April, 1852, Senor Don Vic­to­ri­ano de Diego Pare­des was re­ceived as charge d’af­faires of the Re­pub­lic of New Grana­da. On the 20th of June, 1855, Gen­er­al Pe­dro Al­can­tara Her­ran was again re­ceived as en­voy ex­traor­di­nary and min­is­ter plenipo­ten­tiary, du­ly ac­cred­it­ed by the Re­pub­lic of New Grana­da, and he has ev­er since re­mained, un­der the same cre­den­tials, as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that re­pub­lic near the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States. On the 10th of Septem­ber, 1857, a claims con­ven­tion was con­clud­ed be­tween the Unit­ed States and the Re­pub­lic of Grana­da. This con­ven­tion is still in force, and has in part been ex­ecut­ed. In May, 1858, the con­sti­tu­tion of the re­pub­lic was re­mod­elled; and the na­tion as­sumed the po­lit­ical ti­tle of “The Grana­di­an Con­fed­er­acy.” This fact was for­mal­ly an­nounced to this Gov­ern­ment, but with­out any change in their rep­re­sen­ta­tive here. Pre­vi­ous­ly to the 4th day of March, 1861, a rev­olu­tion­ary war against the Re­pub­lic of New Grana­da, which had thus been rec­og­nized and treat­ed with by the Unit­ed States, broke out in New Grana­da, as­sum­ing to set up a new gov­ern­ment un­der the name of “Unit­ed States of Colom­bia.” This war has had var­ious vi­cis­si­tudes, some­times fa­vor­able, some­times ad­verse, to the rev­olu­tion­ary move­ments. The rev­olu­tion­ary or­ga­ni­za­tion has hith­er­to been sim­ply a mil­itary pro­vi­sion­ary pow­er, and no defini­tive con­sti­tu­tion of gov­ern­ment has yet been es­tab­lished in New Grana­da in place of that or­ga­nized by the con­sti­tu­tion of 1858. The min­is­ter of the Unit­ed States to the Grana­di­an Con­fed­er­acy, who was ap­point­ed on the 29th day of May, 1861, was di­rect­ed, in view of the oc­cu­pa­tion of the cap­ital by the rev­olu­tion­ary par­ty and of the un­cer­tain­ty of the civ­il war, not to present his cre­den­tials to ei­ther the gov­ern­ment of the Grana­di­an Con­fed­er­acy or to the pro­vi­sion­al mil­itary gov­ern­ment, but to con­duct his af­fairs in­for­mal­ly, as is cus­tom­ary in such cas­es, and to re­port the progress of events and await the in­struc­tions of this Gov­ern­ment. The ad­vices which have been re­ceived from him have not hith­er­to, been suf­fi­cient­ly con­clu­sive to de­ter­mine me to rec­og­nize the rev­olu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment. Gen­er­al Her­ran be­ing here, with full au­thor­ity from the Gov­ern­ment of New Cana­da, which has been so long rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States, I have not re­ceived any rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the rev­olu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment, which has not yet been rec­og­nized, be­cause such a pro­ceed­ing would be in it­self an act of recog­ni­tion.

Of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tions have been had on var­ious in­ci­den­tal and oc­ca­sion­al ques­tions with Gen­er­al Her­ran as the min­is­ter plenipo­ten­tiary and en­voy ex­traor­di­nary of the Grana­di­an Con­fed­er­acy, but in no oth­er char­ac­ter. No defini­tive mea­sure or pro­ceed­ing has re­sult­ed from these com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and a com­mu­ni­ca­tion of them at present would not, in my judg­ment, be com­pat­ible with the pub­lic in­ter­est.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR.

WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary 15, 1863.

SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR:

Please see Mr. Stafford, who wants to as­sist in rais­ing col­ored troops in Mis­souri.

A. LIN­COLN.

PRINT­ING MON­EY

MES­SAGE TO CONGRESS.

Jan­uary 17, 1863.

TO THE SEN­ATE AND HOUSE OF REP­RE­SEN­TA­TIVES:

I have signed the joint res­olu­tion to pro­vide for the im­me­di­ate pay­ment of the army and navy of the Unit­ed States, passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the 14th and by the Sen­ate on the 15th in­stant.

The joint res­olu­tion is a sim­ple au­thor­ity, amount­ing, how­ev­er, un­der ex­ist­ing cir­cum­stances, to a di­rec­tion, to the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury to make an ad­di­tion­al is­sue of $100,000,000 in Unit­ed States notes, if so much mon­ey is need­ed, for the pay­ment of the army and navy.

My ap­proval is giv­en in or­der that ev­ery pos­si­ble fa­cil­ity may be af­ford­ed for the prompt dis­charge of all ar­rears of pay due to our sol­diers and our sailors.

While giv­ing this ap­proval, how­ev­er, I think it my du­ty to ex­press my sin­cere re­gret that it has been found nec­es­sary to au­tho­rize so large an ad­di­tion­al is­sue of Unit­ed States notes, when this cir­cu­la­tion and that of the sus­pend­ed banks to­geth­er have be­come al­ready so re­dun­dant as to in­crease prices be­yond re­al val­ues, there­by aug­ment­ing the cost of liv­ing to the in­jury of la­bor, and the cost of sup­plies to the in­jury of the whole coun­try.

It seems very plain that con­tin­ued is­sues of Unit­ed States notes with­out any check to the is­sues of sus­pend­ed banks, and with­out ad­equate pro­vi­sion for the rais­ing of mon­ey by loans and for fund­ing the is­sues so as to keep them with­in due lim­its, must soon pro­duce dis­as­trous con­se­quences; and this mat­ter ap­pears to me so im­por­tant that I feel bound to avail my­self of this oc­ca­sion to ask the spe­cial at­ten­tion of Congress to it.

That Congress has pow­er to reg­ulate the cur­ren­cy of the coun­try can hard­ly ad­mit of doubt, and that a ju­di­cious mea­sure to pre­vent the de­te­ri­ora­tion of this cur­ren­cy, by a sea­son­able tax­ation of bank cir­cu­la­tion or oth­er­wise, is need­ed seems equal­ly clear. In­de­pen­dent­ly of this gen­er­al con­sid­er­ation, it would be un­just to the peo­ple at large to ex­empt banks en­joy­ing the spe­cial priv­ilege of cir­cu­la­tion from their just pro­por­tion of the pub­lic bur­dens.

In or­der to raise mon­ey by way of loans most eas­ily and cheap­ly, it is clear­ly nec­es­sary to give ev­ery pos­si­ble sup­port to the pub­lic cred­it. To that end a uni­form cur­ren­cy, in which tax­es, sub­scrip­tions to loans, and all oth­er or­di­nary pub­lic dues as well as all pri­vate dues may be paid, is al­most if not quite in­dis­pens­able. Such a cur­ren­cy can be fur­nished by bank­ing as­so­ci­ations or­ga­nized un­der a gen­er­al act of Congress, as sug­gest­ed in my mes­sage at the be­gin­ning of the present ses­sion. The se­cur­ing of this cir­cu­la­tion by the pledge of Unit­ed States bonds, as there­in sug­gest­ed, would still fur­ther fa­cil­itate loans, by in­creas­ing the present and caus­ing a fu­ture de­mand for such bonds.

In view of the ac­tu­al fi­nan­cial em­bar­rass­ments of the gov­ern­ment, and of the greater em­bar­rass­ment sure to come if the nec­es­sary means of re­lief be not af­ford­ed, I feel that I should not per­form my du­ty by a sim­ple an­nounce­ment of my ap­proval of the joint res­olu­tion, which pro­pos­es re­lief on­ly by in­creased cir­cu­la­tion, with­out ex­press­ing my earnest de­sire that mea­sures such in sub­stance as those I have just re­ferred to may re­ceive the ear­ly sanc­tion of Congress. By such mea­sures, in my opin­ion, will pay­ment be most cer­tain­ly se­cured, not on­ly to the army and navy, but to all hon­est cred­itors of the gov­ern­ment, and sat­is­fac­to­ry pro­vi­sion made for fu­ture de­mands on the trea­sury.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TO THE WORK­ING-​MEN OF MANCH­ESTER, ENG­LAND.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary, 1863.

TO THE WORK­ING-​MEN OF MANCH­ESTER:

I have the hon­or to ac­knowl­edge the re­ceipt of the ad­dress and res­olu­tions which you sent me on the eve of the new year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, through a free and con­sti­tu­tion­al elec­tion to fire­side in the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, the coun­try was found at the verge of civ­il war. What­ev­er might have been the cause, or whoseso­ev­er the fault, one du­ty, paramount to all oth­ers, was be­fore me, name­ly, to main­tain and pre­serve at once the Con­sti­tu­tion and the in­tegri­ty of the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic. A con­sci­en­tious pur­pose to per­form this du­ty is the key to all the mea­sures of ad­min­is­tra­tion which have been and to all which will here­after be pur­sued. Un­der our frame of gov­ern­ment and my of­fi­cial oath, I could not de­part from this pur­pose if I would. It is not al­ways in the pow­er of gov­ern­ments to en­large or re­strict the scope of moral re­sults which fol­low the poli­cies that they may deem it nec­es­sary for the pub­lic safe­ty from time to time to adopt.

I have un­der­stood well that the du­ty of self-​preser­va­tion rests sole­ly with the Amer­ican peo­ple; but I have at the same time been aware that fa­vor or dis­fa­vor of for­eign na­tions might have a ma­te­ri­al in­flu­ence in en­larg­ing or pro­long­ing the strug­gle with dis­loy­al men in which the coun­try is en­gaged. A fair ex­am­ina­tion of his­to­ry has served to au­tho­rize a be­lief that the past ac­tions and in­flu­ences of the Unit­ed States were gen­er­al­ly re­gard­ed as hav­ing been ben­efi­cial to­ward mankind. I have, there­fore, reck­oned up­on the for­bear­ance of na­tions. Cir­cum­stances–to some of which you kind­ly al­lude–in­duce me es­pe­cial­ly to ex­pect that if jus­tice and good faith should be prac­tised by the Unit­ed States, they would en­counter no hos­tile in­flu­ence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleas­ant du­ty to ac­knowl­edge the demon­stra­tion you have giv­en of your de­sire that a spir­it of ami­ty and peace to­ward this coun­try may pre­vail in the coun­cils of your Queen, who is re­spect­ed and es­teemed in your own coun­try on­ly more than she is by the kin­dred na­tion which has its home on this side of the At­lantic.

I know and deeply de­plore the suf­fer­ings which the work­ing­men at Manch­ester, and in all Eu­rope, are called to en­dure in this cri­sis. It has been of­ten and stu­dious­ly rep­re­sent­ed that the at­tempt to over­throw this gov­ern­ment, which was built up­on the foun­da­tion of hu­man rights, and to sub­sti­tute for it one which should rest ex­clu­sive­ly on the ba­sis of hu­man slav­ery, was like­ly to ob­tain the fa­vor of Eu­rope. Through the ac­tion of our dis­loy­al cit­izens, the work­ing-​men of Eu­rope have been sub­ject­ed to se­vere tri­als, for the pur­pose of forc­ing their sanc­tion to that at­tempt. Un­der the cir­cum­stance, I can­not but re­gard your de­ci­sive ut­ter­ances up­on the ques­tion as an in­stance of sub­lime Chris­tian hero­ism which has not been sur­passed in any age or in any coun­try. It is in­deed an en­er­get­ic and in­spir­ing as­sur­ance of the in­her­ent pow­er of truth and of the ul­ti­mate and uni­ver­sal tri­umph of jus­tice, hu­man­ity, and free­dom. I do not doubt that the sen­ti­ments, you have ex­pressed will be sus­tained by your great na­tion; and, on the oth­er hand, I have no hes­ita­tion in as­sur­ing you that they will ex­cite ad­mi­ra­tion, es­teem, and the most re­cip­ro­cal feel­ings of friend­ship among the Amer­ican peo­ple.

I hail this in­ter­change of sen­ti­ment, there­fore, as an au­gury that what­ev­er else may hap­pen, what­ev­er mis­for­tune may be­fall your coun­try or my own, the peace and friend­ship which now ex­ist be­tween the two na­tions will be, as it shall be my de­sire to make them, per­pet­ual.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

MES­SAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary 21, 1863.

GEN­TLE­MEN OF THE SEN­ATE AND HOUSE OF REP­RE­SEN­TA­TIVES:

I sub­mit here­with for your con­sid­er­ation the joint res­olu­tions of the cor­po­rate au­thor­ities of the city of Wash­ing­ton, adopt­ed Septem­ber a 7, 1862, and a memo­ri­al of the same un­der date of Oc­to­ber 28, 1862, both re­lat­ing to and urg­ing the con­struc­tion of cer­tain rail­roads con­cen­trat­ing up­on the city of Wash­ing­ton.

In pre­sent­ing this memo­ri­al and the joint res­olu­tions to you, I am not pre­pared to say more than that the sub­ject is one of great prac­ti­cal im­por­tance, and that I hope it will re­ceive the at­ten­tion of Congress.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

IN­DORSE­MENT ON THE PRO­CEED­INGS AND SEN­TENCE OF THE FITZ-​JOHN PORTER COURT-​MAR­TIAL.

HEAD­QUAR­TERS OF THE ARMY, WASH­ING­TON,

Jan­uary 13, 1863.

In com­pli­ance with the Six­ty-​fifth Ar­ti­cle of War, these whole pro­ceed­ings are trans­mit­ted to the Sec­re­tary of War, to be laid be­fore the Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States.

H. W. HAL­LECK, Gen­er­al-​in-​Chief. Jan­uary 21, 1863.

The fore­go­ing pro­ceed­ings, find­ings, and sen­tence in the fore­go­ing case of Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al Fitz-​John Porter are ap­proved and con­firmed, and it is or­dered that the said Fitz-​John Porter be, and he here­by is, cashiered and dis­missed from the ser­vice of the Unit­ed States as a ma­jor-​gen­er­al of vol­un­teers, and as colonel and brevet brigadier-​gen­er­al in the reg­ular ser­vice of the Unit­ed States, and for­ev­er dis­qual­ified from hold­ing any of­fice of trust or prof­it un­der the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

FROM GEN­ER­AL HAL­LECK TO GEN­ER­AL U. S. GRANT.

HEAD­QUAR­TERS OF THE ARMY, WASH­ING­TON

Jan­uary 21, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL GRANT, Mem­phis.

GEN­ER­AL:–The Pres­ident has di­rect­ed that so much of Arkansas as you may de­sire to con­trol be tem­porar­ily at­tached to your de­part­ment. This will give you con­trol of both banks of the riv­er.

In your op­er­ations down the Mis­sis­sip­pi you must not re­ly too con­fi­dent­ly up­on any di­rect co-​op­er­ation of Gen­er­al Banks and the low­er flotil­la, as it is pos­si­ble that they may not be able to pass or re­duce Port Hud­son. They, how­ev­er, will do ev­ery­thing in their pow­er to form a junc­tion with you at Vicks­burg. If they should not be able to ef­fect this, they will at least oc­cu­py a por­tion of the en­emy’s forces, and pre­vent them from re­in­forc­ing Vicks­burg. I hope, how­ev­er, that they will do still bet­ter and be able to join you.

It may be prop­er to give you some ex­pla­na­tion of the re­vo­ca­tion of your or­der ex­pelling all Jews from your de­part­ment. The Pres­ident has no ob­jec­tion to your ex­pelling traitors and Jew ped­dlers, which, I sup­pose, was the ob­ject of your or­der; but as it in terms pro­scribed an en­tire re­li­gious class, some of whom are fight­ing in our ranks, the Pres­ident deemed it nec­es­sary to re­voke it.

Very re­spect­ful­ly, your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

H. W. HAL­LECK, Gen­er­al-​in-​Chief.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary 23, 1863

GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE:

Will see you any mo­ment when you come.

A. LIN­COLN.

OR­DER RE­LIEV­ING GEN­ER­AL A. E. BURN­SIDE AND MAK­ING OTH­ER CHANGES.

(Gen­er­al Or­ders No.20.)

WAR DE­PART­MENT, AD­JU­TANT-​GEN­ER­AL’S OF­FICE, WASH­ING­TON, D.C. JAN­UARY 25, 1863.

I. The Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States has di­rect­ed:

1st. That Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al A. E. Burn­side, at his own re­quest, be re­lieved from the com­mand of the Army of the Po­tomac.

2d. That Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al E. V. Sum­ner, at his own re­quest, be re­lieved from du­ty in the Army of the Po­tomac.

3d. That Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al W. B. Franklin be re­lieved from du­ty in the Army of the Po­tomac.

4th. That Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al J. Hook­er be as­signed to the com­mand of the Army of the Po­tomac.

II. The of­fi­cers re­lieved as above will re­port in per­son to the ad­ju­tant-​gen­er­al of the army.

By or­der of the Sec­re­tary of War: D. TOWNSEND, As­sis­tant Ad­ju­tant-​Gen­er­al

TO GEN­ER­AL J. HOOK­ER.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Jan­uary 26, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

GEN­ER­AL:–I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Po­tomac. Of course I have done this up­on what ap­pear to me to be suf­fi­cient rea­sons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in re­gard to which I am not quite sat­is­fied with you. I be­lieve you to be a brave and skill­ful sol­dier, which of course I like. I al­so be­lieve you do not mix pol­itics with your pro­fes­sion, in which you are right. You have con­fi­dence in your­self, which is a valu­able if not an in­dis­pens­able qual­ity. You are am­bi­tious, which with­in rea­son­able bounds does good rather than harm; but I think that dur­ing Gen­er­al Burn­side’s com­mand of the army you have tak­en coun­sel of your am­bi­tion and thwart­ed him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the coun­try and to a most mer­ito­ri­ous and hon­or­able broth­er of­fi­cer. I have heard, in such a way as to be­lieve it, of your re­cent­ly say­ing that both the army and the gov­ern­ment need­ed a dic­ta­tor. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have giv­en you the com­mand. On­ly those gen­er­als who gain suc­cess­es can set up dic­ta­tors. What I now ask of you is mil­itary suc­cess, and I will risk the dic­ta­tor­ship. The gov­ern­ment will sup­port you to the ut­most of its abil­ity, which is nei­ther more nor less than it has done and will do for all com­man­ders. I much fear that the spir­it that you have aid­ed to in­fuse in­to the army, of crit­iciz­ing their com­man­der and with­hold­ing con­fi­dence from him, will now turn up­on you. I shall as­sist you as far as I can to put it down. Nei­ther you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spir­it pre­vails in it. And now be­ware of rash­ness. Be­ware of rash­ness, but with en­er­gy and sleep­less vig­ilance go for­ward and give us vic­to­ries.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

MES­SAGE TO CONGRESS.

WASH­ING­TON CITY, Jan­uary 28,1863,

TO THE SEN­ATE AND HOUSE OF REP­RE­SEN­TA­TIVES:

In con­for­mi­ty to the law of Ju­ly 16, 1862, I most cor­dial­ly rec­om­mend that Com­man­der David D. Porter, Unit­ed States Navy, act­ing rear-​ad­mi­ral, com­mand­ing the Mis­sis­sip­pi Squadron, re­ceive a vote of thanks of Congress for the brav­ery and skill dis­played in the at­tack on the post of Arkansas, which sur­ren­dered to the com­bined mil­itary and naval forces on the 10th in­stant.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL BUT­LER

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary 28, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BUT­LER, Low­ell, Mass.:

Please come here im­me­di­ate­ly. Tele­graph me about what time you will ar­rive.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary 29, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL DIx, Fort Mon­roe, Va.:

Do Rich­mond pa­pers have any­thing from Vicks­burg?

A. LIN­COLN.

TO THUR­LOW WEED.

WASH­ING­TON, Jan­uary 29, 1863.

HON. THUR­LOW WEED.

DEAR SIR:–Your vale­dic­to­ry to the pa­trons of the Al­bany Evening jour­nal brings me a good deal of un­easi­ness. What does it mean?

Tru­ly Yours,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY,

Jan­uary 30, 1863. 5.45 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL Dix, Fort Mon­roe, Va.:

What iron-​clads, if any, have gone out of Hamp­ton Roads with­in the last two days?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, D. C., Jan­uary 31, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL Dix, Fort Mon­roe, Va.: Cor­co­ran’s and Pry­or’s bat­tle ter­mi­nat­ed. Have you any news through Rich­mond pa­pers or oth­er­wise?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, D. C., Jan­uary 31, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

I do not take ju­ris­dic­tion of the pass ques­tion. Ex­er­cise your own dis­cre­tion as to whether Judge Pet­tis shall have a pass.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO THE WORK­ING-​MEN OF LON­DON, ENG­LAND.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, Febru­ary 1, 1863.

TO THE WORK­ING-​MEN OF LON­DON:

I have re­ceived the New Year’s ad­dress which you have sent me, with a sin­cere ap­pre­ci­ation of the ex­alt­ed and hu­mane sen­ti­ments by which it was in­spired.

As these sen­ti­ments are man­ifest­ly the en­dur­ing sup­port of the free in­sti­tu­tions of Eng­land, so I am sure al­so that they con­sti­tute the on­ly re­li­able ba­sis for free in­sti­tu­tions through­out the world.

The re­sources, ad­van­tages, and pow­ers of the Amer­ican peo­ple are very great, and they have con­se­quent­ly suc­ceed­ed to equal­ly great re­spon­si­bil­ities. It seems to have de­volved up­on them to test whether a gov­ern­ment es­tab­lished on the prin­ci­ples of hu­man free­dom can be main­tained against an ef­fort to build one up­on the ex­clu­sive foun­da­tion of hu­man bondage. They will re­joice with me in the new ev­idences which your pro­ceed­ings fur­nish that the mag­na­nim­ity they are ex­hibit­ing is just­ly es­ti­mat­ed by the true friends of free­dom and hu­man­ity in for­eign coun­tries.

Ac­cept my best wish­es for your in­di­vid­ual wel­fare, and for the wel­fare and hap­pi­ness of the whole British peo­ple.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK. [Ci­pher.] WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C.,

Febru­ary 4, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

I hear of some dif­fi­cul­ty in the streets of Bal­ti­more yes­ter­day. What is the amount of it?

A. LIN­COLN.

MES­SAGE TO THE SEN­ATE.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Febru­ary 12, 1863.

TO THE SEN­ATE OF THE UNIT­ED STATES:

On the 4th of Septem­ber, 1862, Com­man­der George Hen­ry Pre­ble, Unit­ed States Navy, then se­nior of­fi­cer in com­mand of the naval force off the har­bor of Mo­bile, was guilty of in­ex­cus­able ne­glect in per­mit­ting the armed steam­er Ore­to in open day­light to run the block­ade. For his omis­sion to per­form his whole du­ty on that oc­ca­sion, and the in­jury there­by in­flict­ed on the ser­vice and the coun­try, his name was strick­en from the list of naval of­fi­cers and he was dis­missed [from] the ser­vice.

Since his dis­missal earnest ap­pli­ca­tion has been made for his restora­tion to his for­mer po­si­tion by sen­ators and naval of­fi­cers, on the ground that his fault was an er­ror of judg­ment, and that the ex­am­ple in his case has al­ready had its ef­fect in pre­vent­ing a rep­eti­tion of sim­ilar ne­glect.

I there­fore on this ap­pli­ca­tion and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and in con­sid­er­ation of his pre­vi­ous fair record, do here­by nom­inate George Hen­ry Pre­ble to be a com­man­der in the navy from the 16th Ju­ly, 1862, to take rank on the ac­tive list next af­ter Com­man­der Ed­ward Don­ald­son, and to fill a va­can­cy oc­ca­sioned by the death of Com­man­der J. M. Wain­wright.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

MES­SAGE TO THE SEN­ATE.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., Febru­ary 12, 1863.

TO THE SEN­ATE OF THE UNIT­ED STATES:

On the 24th Au­gust, 1861, Com­man­der Roger Per­ry, Unit­ed. States Navy, was dis­missed from the ser­vice un­der a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion in re­gard to his loy­al­ty to the Gov­ern­ment, from the cir­cum­stance that sev­er­al oaths were trans­mit­ted to him and the Navy De­part­ment failed to re­ceive any recog­ni­tion of them. Af­ter his dis­missal, and up­on his as­sur­ance that the oath failed to reach him and his readi­ness to ex­ecute it, he was recom­mis­sioned to his orig­inal po­si­tion on the 4th Septem­ber fol­low­ing. On the same day, 4th Septem­ber, he was or­dered to com­mand the sloop of war Van­dalia; on the 22d this or­der was re­voked and he was or­dered to du­ty in the Mis­sis­sip­pi Squadron, and on the 23d Jan­uary, 1862, was de­tached sick, and has since re­mained un­em­ployed. The ad­vi­so­ry board un­der the act of 16th Ju­ly, 1862, did not rec­om­mend him for fur­ther pro­mo­tion.

This last com­mis­sion, hav­ing been is­sued dur­ing the re­cess of the Sen­ate, ex­pired at the end of the suc­ceed­ing ses­sion, 17th Ju­ly, 1862, from which date, not hav­ing been nom­inat­ed to the Sen­ate, he ceased to be a com­man­der in the navy.

To cor­rect the omis­sion to nom­inate this of­fi­cer to the Sen­ate at its last ses­sion, I now nom­inate Com­man­der Roger Per­ry to be a com­man­der in the navy from the 14th Septem­ber, 1855, to take his rel­ative po­si­tion on the list of com­man­ders not rec­om­mend­ed for fur­ther pro­mo­tion.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Febru­ary 12,1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Murfrees­bor­ough, Tenn.:

Your despatch about “riv­er pa­trolling” re­ceived. I have called the Sec­re­tary of the Navy, Sec­re­tary of War, and Gen­er­al-​in-​Chief to­geth­er, and sub­mit­ted it to them, who promise to do their very best in the case. I can­not take it in­to my own hands with­out pro­duc­ing in­ex­tri­ca­ble con­fu­sion.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO SI­MON CAMERON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Febru­ary 13, 1863.

HON. SI­MON CAMERON, Har­ris­burg, Pa.: Gen­er­al Clay is here and I sup­pose the mat­ter we spoke of will have to be def­inite­ly set­tled now. Please an­swer.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO ALEXAN­DER REED.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Febru­ary 22, 1863.

REV. ALEXAN­DER REED. MY DEAR SIR:–Your note, by which you, as Gen­er­al Su­per­in­ten­dent of the Unit­ed States Chris­tian Com­mis­sion, in­vite me to pre­side at a meet­ing to be held this day at the hall of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in this city, is re­ceived.

While, for rea­sons which I deem suf­fi­cient, I must de­cline to pre­side, I can­not with­hold my ap­proval of the meet­ing and its wor­thy ob­jects.

What­ev­er shall be, sin­cere­ly and in God’s name, de­vised for the good of the sol­diers and sea­men in their hard spheres of du­ty, can scarce­ly fail to be blessed; and what­ev­er shall tend to turn our thoughts from the un­rea­son­ing and un­char­ita­ble pas­sions, prej­udices, and jeal­ousies in­ci­dent to a great na­tion­al trou­ble such as ours, and to fix them on the vast and long en­dur­ing con­se­quences, for weal or for woe, which are to re­sult from the strug­gle, and es­pe­cial­ly to strength­en our re­liance on the Supreme Be­ing for the fi­nal tri­umph of the right, can­not but be well for us all.

The birth­day of Wash­ing­ton and the Chris­tian Sab­bath co­in­cid­ing this year, and sug­gest­ing to­geth­er the high­est in­ter­ests of this life and of that to come, is most pro­pi­tious for the meet­ing pro­posed.

Your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO J. K. DUBOIS. [Ci­pher] WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C. Febru­ary 26,1863.

HON. J. K. DuBois, Spring­field, Ill.: Gen­er­al Rose­crans re­spect­ful­ly urges the ap­point­ment of William P. Caslin as a brigadier-​gen­er­al, What say you?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, Febru­ary 27,1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

If it will be no detri­ment to the ser­vice I will be obliged for Capt. Hen­ry A. Marchant, of Com­pa­ny I, Twen­ty-​third Penn­syl­va­nia Vol­un­teers, to come here and re­main four or five days.

A. LIN­COLN.

PROCLA­MA­TION CON­VEN­ING THE SEN­ATE,

FEBRU­ARY 28, 1863

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA

A Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as ob­jects of in­ter­est to the Unit­ed States re­quire that the Sen­ate should be con­vened at 12 o’clock on the 4th of March next to re­ceive and act up­on such com­mu­ni­ca­tions as may be made to it on the part of the Ex­ec­utive:

Now, there­fore, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, have con­sid­ered it to be my du­ty to is­sue this my procla­ma­tion, declar­ing that an ex­traor­di­nary oc­ca­sion re­quires the Sen­ate of the Unit­ed States to con­vene for the trans­ac­tion of busi­ness at the Capi­tol, in the city of Wash­ing­ton, on the 4th day of March next, at 12 o’clock at noon on that day, of which all who shall at that time be en­ti­tled to act as mem­bers of that body are here­by re­quired to take no­tice.

Giv­en un­der my hand and the seal of the Unit­ed States, at Wash­ing­ton, the twen­ty eighth day of Febru­ary A.D. 1863, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica, the eighty-​sev­enth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary o f State.

TO SEC­RE­TARY SE­WARD.

WASH­ING­TON, March, 7,1863.

Mr. M. is now with me on the ques­tion of the Hon­olu­lu Com­mis­sion­er. It pains me some that this tilt for the place of Colonel Bak­er’s friend grows so fierce, now that the Colonel is no longer alive to de­fend him. I pre­sume, how­ev­er, we shall have no rest from it. In self-​de­fense I am dis­posed to say, “Make a se­lec­tion and send it to me.”

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR TOD,

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 9, 1863.

GOV­ER­NOR DAVID TOD, Colum­bus, Ohio:

I think your ad­vice with that of oth­ers would be valu­able in the se­lec­tion of provost-​mar­shals for Ohio.

A. LIN­COLN.

PROCLA­MA­TION RE­CALL­ING SOL­DIERS TO THEIR REG­IMENTS MARCH 10, 1863

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES:

A Procla­ma­tion

In pur­suance of the twen­ty-​sixth sec­tion of the act of Congress en­ti­tled “An act for en­rolling and call­ing out the na­tion­al forces, and for oth­er pur­pos­es,” ap­proved on the 3d day of March, 1863, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident and Com­man­der-​in-​Chief of the Army and Navy of the Unit­ed States, do here­by or­der and com­mand that all sol­diers en­list­ed or draft­ed in the ser­vice of the Unit­ed States now ab­sent from their reg­iments with­out leave shall forth­with re­turn to their re­spec­tive reg­iments.

And I do here­by de­clare and pro­claim that all sol­diers now ab­sent from their re­spec­tive reg­iments with­out leave who shall, on or be­fore the first day of April, 1863, re­port them­selves at any ren­dezvous des­ig­nat­ed by the gen­er­al or­ders of the War De­part­ment No. 58, here­to an­nexed, may be re­stored to their re­spec­tive reg­iments with­out pun­ish­ment, ex­cept the for­fei­ture of pay and al­lowances dur­ing their ab­sence; and all who do not re­turn with­in the time above spec­ified shall be ar­rest­ed as de­sert­ers and pun­ished as the law pro­vides; and

Where­as evil-​dis­posed and dis­loy­al per­sons at sundry places have en­ticed and pro­cured sol­diers to desert and ab­sent them­selves from their reg­iments, there­by weak­en­ing the strength of the armies and pro­long­ing the war, giv­ing aid arid com­fort to the en­emy, and cru­el­ly ex­pos­ing the gal­lant and faith­ful sol­diers re­main­ing in the ranks to in­creased hard­ships and dan­ger:

I do there­fore call up­on all pa­tri­ot­ic and faith­ful cit­izens to op­pose and re­sist the afore­men­tioned dan­ger­ous and trea­son­able crimes, and to aid in restor­ing to their reg­iments all sol­diers ab­sent with­out leave, and to as­sist in the ex­ecu­tion of the act of Congress “for en­rolling and call­ing out the na­tion­al forces, and for oth­er pur­pos­es,” and to sup­port the prop­er au­thor­ities in the pros­ecu­tion and pun­ish­ment of of­fend­ers against said act and in sup­press­ing tile in­sur­rec­tion and re­bel­lion.

In tes­ti­mo­ny where­of I have here­un­to set my hand. Done at the city of Wash­ing­ton, this tenth day of March, A.D. 1863, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States the eighty-​sev­enth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: ED­WIN M. STAN­TON, Sec­re­tary of War.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 13, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Gen­er­al Sta­hel wish­es to be as­signed to Gen­er­al Heintzel­man and Gen­er­al Heintzel­man al­so de­sires it. I would like to oblige both if it would not in­jure the ser­vice in your army, or in­com­mode you. What say you?

A. LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY SE­WARD.

WASH­ING­TON, Match 15, 1863.

I am very glad of your note say­ing “re­cent despatch­es from him are able, ju­di­cious, and loy­al,” and that if I agree; we will leave him there. I am glad to agree, so long as the pub­lic in­ter­est does not seem to re­quire his re­moval.

TELE­GRAM TO J. O. MOR­TON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 16, 1863.

HON. J. O. MOR­TON, Joli­et, Ill.: William Chu­masero is pro­posed for provost-​mar­shal of your dis­trict. What think you of it? I un­der­stand he is a good man.

A. LIN­COLN.

GRANT’S EX­CLU­SION OF A NEWS­PA­PER RE­PORTER

RE­VO­CA­TION OF SEN­TENCE OF T. W. KNOX.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 20, 1863.

WHOM IT MAY CON­CERN:–Where­as, it ap­pears to my sat­is­fac­tion that Thomas W. Knox, a cor­re­spon­dent of the New York Her­ald, has been by the sen­tence of a court-​mar­tial ex­clud­ed from the mil­itary de­part­ment un­der com­mand of Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al Grant, and al­so that Gen­er­al Thay­er, pres­ident of the court-​mar­tial which ren­dered the sen­tence, and Ma­jor-​Gen­er­al Mc­Cler­nand, in com­mand of a corps of that de­part­ment, and many oth­er re­spectable per­sons, are of opin­ion that Mr. Knox’s of­fense was tech­ni­cal rather than wil­ful­ly wrong, and that the sen­tence should be re­voked: now, there­fore, said sen­tence is here­by so far re­voked as to al­low Mr. Knox to re­turn to Gen­er­al Grant’s head­quar­ters, and to re­main if Gen­er­al Grant shall give his ex­press as­sent, and to again leave the de­part­ment if Gen­er­al Grant shall refuse such as­sent.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO BEN­JAMIN GRATZ.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 25,1863.

Mr. BEN­JAMIN GRATZ, Lex­ing­ton, Ky.:

Show this to whom it may con­cern as your au­thor­ity for al­low­ing Mrs. Sel­by to re­main at your house, so long as you choose to be re­spon­si­ble for what she may do.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 25, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Murfrees­bor­ough, Tenn.:

Your dis­patch­es about Gen­er­al Davis and Gen­er­al Mitchell are re­ceived. Gen­er­al Davis’ case is not par­tic­ular, be­ing sim­ply one of a great many rec­om­mend­ed and not nom­inat­ed be­cause they would tran­scend the num­ber al­lowed by law. Gen­er­al Mitchell (was) nom­inat­ed and re­ject­ed by the Sen­ate and I do not think it prop­er for me to renom­inate him with­out a change of cir­cum­stances such as the per­for­mance of ad­di­tion­al ser­vice, or an ex­pressed change of pur­pose on the part of at least some sen­ators who op­posed him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL S. A. HURL­BUT.

WASH­ING­TON, March 25, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HURL­BUT, Mem­phis:

What news have you? What from Vicks­burg? What from Ya­zoo Pass? What from Lake Prov­idence? What gen­er­al­ly?

A. LIN­COLN.

QUES­TION OF RAIS­ING NE­GRO TROOPS

TO GOV­ER­NOR JOHN­SON. (Pri­vate.) EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON March 26, 1863.

HON. AN­DREW JOHN­SON.

MY DEAR SIR:–I am told you have at least thought of rais­ing a ne­gro mil­itary force. In my opin­ion the coun­try now needs no spe­cif­ic thing so much as some man of your abil­ity and po­si­tion to go to this work. When I speak of your po­si­tion, I mean that of an em­inent cit­izen of a slave State and him­self a slave­hold­er. The col­ored pop­ula­tion is the great avail­able and yet un­availed of force for restor­ing the Union. The bare sight of fifty thou­sand armed and drilled black sol­diers up­on the banks of the Mis­sis­sip­pi would end the re­bel­lion at once; and who doubts that we can present that sight if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been think­ing of it, please do not dis­miss the thought.

Yours very tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

PROCLA­MA­TION AP­POINT­ING A NA­TION­AL FAST-​DAY.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

March 30, 1863.

Where­as the Sen­ate of the Unit­ed States, de­vout­ly rec­og­niz­ing the supreme au­thor­ity and just gov­ern­ment of Almighty God in all the af­fairs of men and of na­tions, has by a res­olu­tion re­quest­ed the Pres­ident to des­ig­nate and set apart a day for na­tion­al prayer and hu­mil­ia­tion:

And where­as it is the du­ty of na­tions as well as men to own their de­pen­dence up­on the over­rul­ing pow­er of God; to con­fess their sins and trans­gres­sions in hum­ble sor­row, yet with as­sured hope that gen­uine re­pen­tance will lead to mer­cy and par­don; and to rec­og­nize the sub­lime truth, an­nounced in the Holy Scrip­tures and proven by all his­to­ry, that those na­tions on­ly are blessed whose God is the Lord:

And in­so­much as we know that by His di­vine law na­tions, like in­di­vid­uals, are sub­ject­ed to pun­ish­ments and chas­tise­ments in this world, may we not just­ly fear that the aw­ful calami­ty of civ­il war which now des­olates the land may be but a pun­ish­ment in­flict­ed up­on us for our pre­sump­tu­ous sins, to the need­ful end of our na­tion­al ref­or­ma­tion as a whole peo­ple? We have been the re­cip­ients of the choic­est boun­ties of Heav­en. We have been pre­served, these many years, in peace and pros­per­ity. We have grown in num­bers, wealth, and pow­er as no oth­er na­tion has ev­er grown; but we have for­got­ten God. We have for­got­ten the gra­cious hand which pre­served us in peace, and mul­ti­plied and en­riched and strength­ened us; and we have vain­ly imag­ined, in the de­ceit­ful­ness of our hearts, that all these bless­ings were pro­duced by some su­pe­ri­or wis­dom and virtue of our own. In­tox­icat­ed with un­bro­ken suc­cess, we have be­come too self- suf­fi­cient to feel the ne­ces­si­ty of re­deem­ing and pre­serv­ing grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us:

It be­hooves us, then, to hum­ble our­selves be­fore the of­fend­ed Pow­er, to con­fess our na­tion­al sins, and to pray for clemen­cy and for­give­ness:

Now, there­fore, in com­pli­ance with the re­quest, and ful­ly con­cur­ring in the views, of the Sen­ate, I do by this my procla­ma­tion des­ig­nate and set apart Thurs­day, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of na­tion­al hu­mil­ia­tion, fast­ing, and prayer. And I do here­by re­quest all the peo­ple to ab­stain on that day from their or­di­nary sec­ular pur­suits, and to unite at their sev­er­al places of pub­lic wor­ship and their re­spec­tive homes in keep­ing the day holy to the Lord, and de­vot­ed to the hum­ble dis­charge of the re­li­gious du­ties prop­er to that solemn oc­ca­sion. All this be­ing done in sin­cer­ity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope, au­tho­rized by the di­vine teach­ings, that the unit­ed cry of the na­tion will be heard on high, and an­swered with bless­ings no less than the par­don of our na­tion­al sins, and the restora­tion of our now di­vid­ed and suf­fer­ing coun­try to its for­mer hap­py con­di­tion of uni­ty and peace.

In wit­ness where­of, I have here­un­to set my hand, and caused the seal of the Unit­ed States to be af­fixed.

Done at the city of Wash­ing­ton, this thir­ti­eth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thou­sand eight hun­dred and six­ty-​three, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States the eighty-​sev­enth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State.

LI­CENSE OF COM­MER­CIAL IN­TER­COURSE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, March 31, 1863.

Where­as by the act of Congress ap­proved Ju­ly 13, 1861, en­ti­tled “An act to pro­vide for the col­lec­tion of du­ties on im­ports, and for oth­er pur­pos­es,” all com­mer­cial in­ter­course be­tween the in­hab­itants of such States as should by procla­ma­tion be de­clared in in­sur­rec­tion against the Unit­ed States and the cit­izens of the rest of the Unit­ed States was pro­hib­it­ed so long as such con­di­tion of hos­til­ity should con­tin­ue, ex­cept as the same shall be li­censed and per­mit­ted by the Pres­ident to be con­duct­ed and car­ried on on­ly in pur­suance of rules and reg­ula­tions pre­scribed by the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury; and:

Where­as it ap­pears that a par­tial restora­tion of such in­ter­course be­tween the in­hab­itants of sundry places and sec­tions hereto­fore de­clared in in­sur­rec­tion in pur­suance of said act and the cit­izens of the rest of the Unit­ed States will fa­vor­ably af­fect the pub­lic in­ter­ests:

Now, there­fore, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, ex­er­cis­ing the au­thor­ity and dis­cre­tion con­fid­ed to me by the said act of Congress, do here­by li­cense and per­mit such com­mer­cial in­ter­course be­tween the cit­izens of loy­al States and the in­hab­itants of such in­sur­rec­tionary States in the cas­es and un­der the re­stric­tions de­scribed and ex­pressed in the reg­ula­tions pre­scribed by the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury bear­ing even date with these presents, or in such oth­er reg­ula­tions as he may here­after, with my ap­proval, pre­scribe.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL D. HUNTER.

(Pri­vate.) EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D. C April 1, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HUNTER.

MY DEAR SIR:–I am glad to see the ac­counts of your col­ored force at Jack­sonville, Flori­da. I see the en­emy are driv­ing at them fierce­ly, as is to be ex­pect­ed. It is im­por­tant to the en­emy that such a force shall not take shape and grow and thrive in the South, and in pre­cise­ly the same pro­por­tion it is im­por­tant to us that it shall. Hence the ut­most cau­tion and vig­ilance is nec­es­sary on our part. The en­emy will make ex­tra ef­forts to de­stroy them, and we should do the same to pre­serve and in­crease them.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

PROCLA­MA­TION ABOUT COM­MER­CIAL IN­TER­COURSE, APRIL 2, 1863

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as, in pur­suance of the act of Congress ap­proved Ju­ly 13, 1861, I did, by procla­ma­tion dat­ed Au­gust 16, 1861, de­clare that the in­hab­itants of the States of Geor­gia, South Car­oli­na, Vir­ginia, North Car­oli­na, Ten­nessee, Al­aba­ma, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mis­sis­sip­pi, and Flori­da (ex­cept the in­hab­itants of that part of Vir­ginia ly­ing west of the Al­leghany Moun­tains, and of such oth­er parts of that State and the oth­er States here­in­be­fore named as might main­tain a le­gal ad­he­sion to the Union and the Con­sti­tu­tion or might be from time to time oc­cu­pied and con­trolled by forces of the Unit­ed States en­gaged in the dis­per­sion of said in­sur­gents) were in a state of in­sur­rec­tion against the Unit­ed States, and that all com­mer­cial in­ter­course be­tween the same and the in­hab­itants there­of, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, and the cit­izens of oth­er States and oth­er parts of the Unit­ed States was un­law­ful and would re­main un­law­ful un­til such in­sur­rec­tion should cease or be sup­pressed, and that all goods and chat­tels, wares and mer­chan­dise, com­ing from any of said States, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, in­to oth­er parts of the Unit­ed States with­out the li­cense and per­mis­sion of the Pres­ident, through the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, or pro­ceed­ing to any of said States, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, by land or wa­ter, to­geth­er with the ves­sel or ve­hi­cle con­vey­ing the same to or from said States, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, would be for­feit­ed to the Unit­ed States, and:

Where­as ex­pe­ri­ence has shown that the ex­cep­tions made in and by said procla­ma­tion em­bar­rass the due en­force­ment of said act of Ju­ly 13, 1861, and the prop­er reg­ula­tion of the com­mer­cial in­ter­course au­tho­rized by said act with the loy­al cit­izens of said States:

Now, there­fore, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, do here­by re­voke the said ex­cep­tions, and de­clare that the in­hab­itants of the States of Geor­gia, South Car­oli­na, North Car­oli­na, Ten­nessee, Al­aba­ma, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Flori­da, and Vir­ginia (ex­cept the forty-​eight coun­ties of Vir­ginia des­ig­nat­ed as West Vir­ginia, and ex­cept al­so the ports of New Or­leans, Key West; Port Roy­al, and Beau­fort in North Car­oli­na) are in a state of in­sur­rec­tion against the Unit­ed States, and that all com­mer­cial in­ter­course not li­censed and con­duct­ed as pro­vid­ed in said act be­tween the said States and the in­hab­itants there­of, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, and the cit­izens of oth­er States and oth­er parts of the Unit­ed States is un­law­ful and will re­main un­law­ful un­til such in­sur­rec­tion shall cease or has been sup­pressed and no­tice there­of has been du­ly giv­en by procla­ma­tion; and all cot­ton, to­bac­co, and oth­er prod­ucts, and all oth­er goods and chat­tels, wares and mer­chan­dise, com­ing from any of said States, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, in­to oth­er parts of the Unit­ed States, or pro­ceed­ing to any of said States, with the ex­cep­tions afore­said, with­out the li­cense and per­mis­sion of the Pres­ident, through the Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, will to­geth­er with the ves­sel or ve­hi­cle con­vey­ing the same, be for­feit­ed to the Unit­ed States.

In wit­ness where­of I have here­un­to set my hand and caused the seal of the Unit­ed States to be af­fixed.

Done at the city of Wash­ing­ton, this sec­ond day of April, A.D. 1863, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica the eighty-​sev­enth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, April 3, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Our plan is to pass Sat­ur­day night on the boat, go over from Aquia Creek to your camp Sun­day morn­ing, re­main with you till Tues­day morn­ing, and then re­turn. Our par­ty will prob­ably not ex­ceed six per­sons of all sorts.

A. LIN­COLN.

OPIN­ION ON HAR­BOR DE­FENSE.

April 4, 1863.

On this gen­er­al sub­ject I re­spect­ful­ly re­fer Mr.________ to the Sec­re­taries of War and Navy for con­fer­ence and con­sul­ta­tion. I have a sin­gle idea of my own about har­bor de­fense. It is a steam ram, built so as to sac­ri­fice near­ly all ca­pac­ity for car­ry­ing to those of speed and strength, so as to be able to split any ves­sel hav­ing hol­low enough in her to car­ry sup­plies for a voy­age of any dis­tance. Such ram, of course, could not her­self car­ry sup­plies for a voy­age of con­sid­er­able dis­tance, and her busi­ness would be to guard a par­tic­ular har­bor as a bull­dog guards his mas­ter’s door.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO THE SEC­RE­TARY OF THE NAVY.

HEAD­QUAR­TERS ARMY PO­TOMAC, April 9, 1863.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF THE NAVY:

Rich­mond Whig of the 8th has no tele­graph­ic despatch­es from Charleston, but has the fol­low­ing as ed­ito­ri­al:

“All thoughts are now cen­tred up­on Charleston. Of­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence was made pub­lic ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing that the en­emy’s iron-​clad fleet had at­tempt­ed to cross the bar and failed, but lat­er in the day it was an­nounced that the gun­boats and trans­ports had suc­ceed­ed in cross­ing and were at an­chor. Our iron-​clads lay be­tween the forts qui­et­ly await­ing the at­tack. Fur­ther in­tel­li­gence is looked for with ea­ger anx­iety. The Yan­kees have made no se­cret of this vast prepa­ra­tion for an at­tack on Charleston, and we may well an­tic­ipate a des­per­ate con­flict. At last the hour of tri­al has come for Charleston, the hour of de­liv­er­ance or de­struc­tion, for no one be­lieves the oth­er al­ter­na­tive, sur­ren­der, pos­si­ble. The heart of the whole coun­try yearns to­ward the be­lea­guered city with in­tense so­lic­itude, yet with hopes amount­ing to con­fi­dence. Charleston knows what is ex­pect­ed of her, and which is due to her fame, and to the re­la­tion she sus­tains to the cause. The de­vot­ed, the hero­ic, the great-​heart­ed Beau­re­gard is there, and he, too, knows what is ex­pect­ed of him and will not dis­ap­point that ex­pec­ta­tion. We pre­dict a Saragos­sa de­fense, and that if Charleston is tak­en it will be on­ly a heap of ru­ins.”

The rebel pick­ets are re­port­ed as call­ing over to our pick­ets to­day that we had tak­en some rebel fort. This is not very in­tel­li­gi­ble, and I think is en­tire­ly un­re­li­able.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO OF­FI­CER IN COM­MAND AT NASHVILLE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, April 11,1863.

OF­FI­CER IN COM­MAND at Nashville, Tenn: Is there a sol­dier by the name of John R. Min­nick of Wynkoop’s cav­al­ry un­der sen­tence of death, by a court-​mar­tial or mil­itary com­mis­sion, in Nashville? And if so what was his of­fense, and when is he to be ex­ecut­ed?

A. LIN­COLN.

If nec­es­sary let the ex­ecu­tion be staid till I can be heard from again. A. LIN­COLN.

[Pres­ident Lin­coln sent many tele­grams sim­ilar in form to this one in or­der to avoid tire­some rep­eti­tion the ed­itor has omit­ted all those with­out es­pe­cial in­ter­est. Hard­ly a day went by that there were not peo­ple in the White House beg­ging mer­cy for a sen­tenced sol­dier. A moth­er one day, plead­ed with Lin­coln to re­mit the sen­tence of ex­ecu­tion on her son. “I don’t think it will do him a bit of good” said Mr. Lin­coln–“Par­doned.” D.W.]

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON D.C., April 12, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Your let­ter by the hand of Gen­er­al But­ter­field is re­ceived, and will be con­formed to. The thing you dis­pense with would have been ready by mid-​day to-​mor­row.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO AD­MI­RAL S. P. DUPONT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, April 13, 1863

AD­MI­RAL DUPONT:

Hold your po­si­tion in­side the bar near Charleston; or, if you shall have left it, re­turn to it, and hold it un­til fur­ther or­ders. Do not al­low the en­emy to erect new bat­ter­ies or de­fens­es on Mor­ris Is­land. If he has be­gun it, drive him out. I do not here­in or­der you to re­new the gen­er­al at­tack. That is to de­pend on your own dis­cre­tion or a fur­ther or­der.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL D. HUNTER AND AD­MI­RAL S. F. DUPONT.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, April 54, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL HUNTER AND AD­MI­RAL DUPONT:

This is in­tend­ed to clear up an ap­par­ent in­con­sis­ten­cy be­tween the re­cent or­der to con­tin­ue op­er­ations be­fore Charleston and the for­mer one to re­move to an­oth­er point in a cer­tain con­tin­gen­cy. No cen­sure up­on you, or ei­ther of you, is in­tend­ed. We still hope that by cor­dial and ju­di­cious co-​op­er­ation you can take the bat­ter­ies on Mor­ris Is­land and Sul­li­van’s Is­land and Fort Sumter. But whether you can or not, we wish the demon­stra­tion kept up for a time, for a col­lat­er­al and very im­por­tant ob­ject. We wish the at­tempt to be a re­al one, though not a des­per­ate one, if it af­fords any con­sid­er­able chance of suc­cess. But if pros­ecut­ed as a demon­stra­tion on­ly, this must not be­come pub­lic, or the whole ef­fect will be lost. Once again be­fore Charleston, do not leave un­til fur­ther or­ders from here. Of course this is not in­tend­ed to force you to leave un­du­ly ex­posed Hilton Head or oth­er near points in your charge.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

P. S.–Who­ev­er re­ceives this first, please send a copy to the oth­er im­me­di­ate­ly. A.L.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL S. HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., April 15, 1863. 10.15 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

It is now 10.15 P.M. An hour ago I re­ceived your let­ter of this morn­ing, and a few mo­ments lat­er your despatch of this evening. The lat­ter gives me con­sid­er­able un­easi­ness. The rain and mud of course were to be cal­cu­lat­ed up­on. Gen­er­al S. is not mov­ing rapid­ly enough to make the ex­pe­di­tion come to any­thing. He has now been out three days, two of which were un­usu­al­ly fair weath­er, and all three with­out hin­drance from the en­emy, and yet he is not twen­ty-​five miles from where he start­ed. To reach his point he still has six­ty to go, an­oth­er riv­er (the Rap­idan) to cross, and will be hin­dered by the en­emy. By arith­metic, how many days will it take him to do it? I do not know that any bet­ter can be done, but I great­ly fear it is an­oth­er fail­ure al­ready. Write me of­ten. I am very anx­ious.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

ON COL­ONIZA­TION AR­RANGE­MENTS

RE­PU­DI­ATION OF AN AGREE­MENT WITH BERNARD KOCK

APRIL 16, 1863.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN,

PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA, TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME,

GREET­ING:

Know ye that, where­as a pa­per bear­ing date the 3rst day of De­cem­ber last, pur­port­ing to be an agree­ment be­tween the Unit­ed States and one Bernard Kock for im­mi­gra­tion of per­sons of African ex­trac­tion to a de­pen­den­cy of the Re­pub­lic of Haiti, was signed by me on be­half of the par­ty of the first part; but where­as the said in­stru­ment was and has since re­mained in­com­plete in con­se­quence of the seal of the Unit­ed States not hav­ing been there­un­to af­fixed; and where­as I have been moved by con­sid­er­ations by me deemed suf­fi­cient to with­hold my au­thor­ity for af­fix­ing the said seal:

Now, there­fore, be it known that I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, do here­by au­tho­rize the Sec­re­tary of State to can­cel my sig­na­ture to the in­stru­ment afore­said.

Done at Wash­ing­ton, this six­teenth day of April, A.D. 1863.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD, Sec­re­tary of State.

STATE­HOOD FOR WEST VIR­GINIA

PROCLA­MA­TION AD­MIT­TING WEST VIR­GINIA IN­TO THE UNION, APRIL 20, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as by the act of Congress ap­proved the 31st day of De­cem­ber last the State of West Vir­ginia was de­clared to be one of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica, and was ad­mit­ted in­to the Union on an equal foot­ing with the orig­inal States in all re­spects what­ev­er, up­on the con­di­tion that cer­tain changes should be du­ly made in the pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion for that State; and

Where­as proof of a com­pli­ance with that con­di­tion, as re­quired by the sec­ond sec­tion of the act afore­said, has been sub­mit­ted to me:

Now, there­fore, be it known that I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States, do here­by, in pur­suance of the act of Congress afore­said, de­clare and pro­claim that the said act shall take ef­fect and be in force from and af­ter six­ty days from the date here­of.

In wit­ness where­of I have here­un­to set my hand and caused the seal of the Unit­ed States to be af­fixed.

Done at the city of Wash­ing­ton, this twen­ti­eth day of April, A.D. 1863, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States the eighty-​sev­enth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, APRIL 23, 1863 10.10am

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Murfrees­bor­ough, Tenn.:

Your despatch of the 21st re­ceived. I re­al­ly can­not say that I have heard any com­plaint of you. I have heard com­plaint of a po­lice corps at Nashville, but your name was not men­tioned in con­nec­tion with it, so far as I re­mem­ber. It may be that by in­fer­ence you are con­nect­ed with it, but my at­ten­tion has nev­er been drawn to it in that light.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL J. HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., April 27, 1863. 3.30 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

How does it look now?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR CURTIN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, April 28, 1863.

HON. A. O. CURTIN, Har­ris­burg, Penn.:

I do not think the peo­ple of Penn­syl­va­nia should be un­easy about an in­va­sion. Doubt­less a small force of the en­emy is flour­ish­ing about in the north­ern part of Vir­ginia, on the “ske­whorn” prin­ci­ple, on pur­pose to di­vert us in an­oth­er quar­ter. I be­lieve it is noth­ing more. We think we have ad­equate force close af­ter them.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO W. A. NEWELL.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, April 29, 1863.

HON. W. A. NEWELL, Al­len­town, N.J.:

I have some trou­ble about provost-​mar­shal in your first dis­trict. Please pro­cure HON. Mr, Starr to come with you and see me, or come to an agree­ment with him and tele­graph me the re­sult.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR CURTIN,

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, MAY 1, 1863

GOV­ER­NOR CURTIN, Har­ris­burg, Penn.:

The whole dis­pos­able force at Bal­ti­more and else where in reach have al­ready been sent af­ter the en­emy which alarms you. The worst thing the en­emy could do for him­self would be to weak­en him­self be­fore Hook­er, and there­fore it is safe to be­lieve he is not do­ing it; and the best thing he could do for him­self would be to get us so scared as to bring part of Hook­er’s force away, and that is just what he is try­ing to do. I will tele­graph you in the morn­ing about call­ing out the mili­tia.

A. LIN­COLN,

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR CURTIN

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, MAY 2, 1863

GOV­ER­NOR CURTIN, Har­ris­burg, Penn.:

Gen­er­al Hal­leck tells me he has a despatch from Gen­er­al Schenck this morn­ing, in­form­ing him that our forces have joined, and that the en­emy men­ac­ing Penn­syl­va­nia will have to fight or run to­day. I hope I am not less anx­ious to do my du­ty to Penn­syl­va­nia than your­self, but I re­al­ly do not yet see the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for in­cur­ring the trou­ble and ex­pense of call­ing out the mili­tia. I shall keep watch, and try to do my du­ty.

A. LIN­COLN P. S.–Our forces are ex­act­ly be­tween the en­emy and Penn­syl­va­nia.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL D. BUT­TER­FIELD.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., May 3, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BUT­TER­FIELD, Chief of Staff:

The Pres­ident thanks you for your tele­grams, and hopes you will keep him ad­vised as rapid­ly as any in­for­ma­tion reach­es you.

ED­WIN M. STAN­TON, Sec­re­tary of War.

GEN­ER­ALS LOST

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL D. BUT­TER­FIELD.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., May 3, 1863. 4.35 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BUT­TER­FIELD:

Where is Gen­er­al Hook­er? Where is Sedg­wick Where is Stone­man?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL J. HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., May 4, 1863. 3.10 P M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

We have news here that the en­emy has re­oc­cu­pied heights above Fred­er­icks­burg. Is that so?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 4, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Cincin­nati, O.:

Our friend Gen­er­al Sigel claims that you owe him a let­ter. If you so re­mem­ber please write him at once. He is here.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., May 6, 1863. 2.25. P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

We have through Gen­er­al Dix the con­tents of Rich­mond pa­pers of the 5th. Gen­er­al Dix’s despatch in full is go­ing to you by Cap­tain Fox of the navy. The sub­stance is Gen­er­al Lee’s despatch of the 3d (Sun­day), claim­ing that he had beat­en you and that you were then re­treat­ing across the Rap­pa­han­nock, dis­tinct­ly stat­ing that two of Longstreet’s di­vi­sions fought you on Sat­ur­day, and that Gen­er­al [E. F.] Pax­ton was killed, Stonewall Jack­son severe­ly wound­ed, and Gen­er­als Heth and A. P. Hill slight­ly wound­ed. The Rich­mond pa­pers al­so stat­ed, up­on what au­thor­ity not men­tioned, that our cav­al­ry have been at Ash­land, Hanover Court-​House, and oth­er points, de­stroy­ing sev­er­al lo­co­mo­tives and a good deal of oth­er prop­er­ty, and all the rail­road bridges to with­in five miles of Rich­mond.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER

WASH­ING­TON, D.C., May 6, 1863. 12.30 P.M.

Just as I tele­graphed you con­tents of Rich­mond pa­pers show­ing that our cav­al­ry has not failed, I re­ceived Gen­er­al But­ter­field’s of 11 A.M. yes­ter­day. This, with the great rain of yes­ter­day and last night se­cur­ing your right flank, I think puts a new face up­on your case; but you must be the judge.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO COLONEL R. IN­GALLS. WASH­ING­TON, D. C., May 6, 1863 1.45 PM

COLONEL IN­GALLS:

News has gone to Gen­er­al Hook­er which may change his plans. Act in view of such con­tin­gen­cy.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL J. HOOK­ER.

HEAD­QUAR­TERS ARMY OF THE PO­TOMAC, May 7, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

MY DEAR SIR:–The re­cent move­ment of your army is end­ed with­out ef­fect­ing its ob­ject, ex­cept, per­haps, some im­por­tant break­ings of the en­emy’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions. What next? If pos­si­ble, I would be very glad of an­oth­er move­ment ear­ly enough to give us some ben­efit from the fact of the en­emy’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­ing bro­ken; but nei­ther for this rea­son nor any oth­er do I wish any­thing done in des­per­ation or rash­ness. An ear­ly move­ment would al­so help to su­per­sede the bad moral ef­fect of there cer­tain, which is said to be con­sid­er­ably in­ju­ri­ous. Have you al­ready in your mind a plan whol­ly or par­tial­ly formed? If you have, pros­ecute it with­out in­ter­fer­ence from me. If you have not, please in­form me, so that I, in­com­pe­tent as I may be, can try and as­sist in the for­ma­tion of some plan for the army.

Yours as ev­er, A. LIN­COLN.

DRAFT­ING OF ALIENS

PROCLA­MA­TION CON­CERN­ING ALIENS,

MAY 8, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion

Where­as the Congress of the Unit­ed States, at its last ses­sion, en­act­ed a law en­ti­tled “An act for en­rolling and call­ing out the na­tion­al forces and for oth­er pur­pos­es,” which was ap­proved on the 3d day of March last; and

Where­as it is re­cit­ed in the said act that there now ex­ists in the Unit­ed States an in­sur­rec­tion and re­bel­lion against the au­thor­ity there­of, and it is, un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States, the du­ty of the gov­ern­ment to sup­press in­sur­rec­tion and re­bel­lion, to guar­an­tee to each State a re­pub­li­can form of gov­ern­ment, and to pre­serve the pub­lic tran­quil­li­ty; and

Where­as for these high pur­pos­es a mil­itary force is in­dis­pens­able, to raise and sup­port which all per­sons Ought will­ing­ly to con­tribute; and

Where­as no ser­vice can be more praise­wor­thy and hon­or­able than that which is ren­dered for the main­te­nance of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the Union, and the con­se­quent preser­va­tion of free gov­ern­ment; and

Where­as, for the rea­sons thus re­cit­ed, it was en­act­ed by the said statute that all able-​bod­ied male cit­izens of the Unit­ed States, and per­sons of for­eign birth who shall have de­clared on oath their in­ten­tion to be­come cit­izens un­der and in pur­suance of the laws there­of, be­tween the ages of twen­ty and forty-​five years (with cer­tain ex­cep­tions not nec­es­sary to be here men­tioned), are de­clared to con­sti­tute the na­tion­al forces, and shall be li­able to per­form mil­itary du­ty in the ser­vice of the Unit­ed States when called out by the Pres­ident for that pur­pose; and

Where­as it is claimed by and in be­half of per­sons of for­eign birth with­in the ages spec­ified in said act, who have hereto­fore de­clared on oath their in­ten­tions to be­come cit­izens un­der and in pur­suance of the laws of the Unit­ed States, and who have not ex­er­cised the right of suf­frage or any oth­er po­lit­ical fran­chise un­der the laws of the Unit­ed States, or of any of the States there­of, that they are not ab­so­lute­ly con­clud­ed by their afore­said dec­la­ra­tion of in­ten­tion from re­nounc­ing their pur­pose to be­come cit­izens, and that, on the con­trary, such per­sons un­der treaties or the law of na­tions re­tain a right to re­nounce that pur­pose and to forego the priv­ileges of cit­izen­ship and res­idence with­in the Unit­ed States un­der the obli­ga­tions im­posed by the afore­said act of Congress:

Now, there­fore, to avoid all mis­ap­pre­hen­sions con­cern­ing the li­abil­ity of per­sons con­cerned to per­form the ser­vice re­quired by such en­act­ment, and to give it full ef­fect, I do here­by or­der and pro­claim that no plea of alien­age will be re­ceived or al­lowed to ex­empt from the obli­ga­tions im­posed by the afore­said act of Congress any per­son of for­eign birth who shall have de­clared on oath his in­ten­tion to be­come a cit­izen of the Unit­ed States un­der the laws there­of, and who shall be found with­in the Unit­ed States at any time dur­ing the con­tin­uance of the present in­sur­rec­tion and re­bel­lion, at or af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of the pe­ri­od of six­ty-​five days from the date of this procla­ma­tion; nor shall any such plea of alien­age be al­lowed in fa­vor of any such per­son who has so, as afore­said, de­clared his in­ten­tion to be­come a cit­izen of the Unit­ed States, and shall have ex­er­cised at any time the right of suf­frage, or any oth­er po­lit­ical fran­chise, with­in the Unit­ed States, un­der the laws there­of, or un­der the laws of any of the sev­er­al States.

In wit­ness where­of, I have here­un­to set my hand, and caused the seal of the Unit­ed States to be af­fixed. Done at the city of Wash­ing­ton, this eighth day of May, in the year of our Lord one thou­sand eight hun­dred and six­ty-​three, and of the in­de­pen­dence of the Unit­ed States the eighty-​sev­enth.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

By the Pres­ident: WILLIAM H. SE­WARD

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL J. HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C. May 8, 1863. 4 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

The news is here of the cap­ture by our forces of Grand Gulf–a large and very im­por­tant thing. Gen­er­al Willich, an ex­changed pris­on­er just from Rich­mond, has talked with me this morn­ing. He was there when our cav­al­ry cut the roads in that vicin­ity. He says there was not a sound pair of legs in Rich­mond, and that our men, had they known it, could have safe­ly gone in and burned ev­ery­thing and brought in Jeff Davis. We cap­tured and paroled 300 or 400 men. He says as he came to City Point there was an army three miles long (Longstreet’s, he thought) mov­ing to­ward Rich­mond.

Muroy has cap­tured a despatch of Gen­er­al Lee, in which he says his loss was fear­ful in his last bat­tle with you.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL J. A. DIX.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, May 9,1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL DIX:

It is very im­por­tant for Hook­er to know ex­act­ly what dam­age is done to the rail­roads at all points be­tween Fred­er­icks­burg and Rich­mond. As yet we have no word as to whether the cross­ings of the North and South An­na, or any of them, have been touched. There are four of these Cross­ings; that is, one on each road on each stream. You read­ily per­ceive why this in­for­ma­tion is de­sired. I sup­pose Kil­patrick or Davis can tell. Please as­cer­tain ful­ly what was done, and what is the present con­di­tion, as near as you can, and ad­vise me at once.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY SE­WARD.

WASH­ING­TON, May 9, 1863

I be­lieve Mr. L. is a good man, but two things need to be re­mem­bered.

1st. Mr. R.’s ri­val was a rel­ative of Mr. L.

2d. I hear of no­body call­ing Mr. R. a “Cop­per­head,” but Mr. L. How­ev­er, let us watch.

A. L.

TO SEC­RE­TARY STAN­TON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, MAY 11, 1863

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR.

DEAR SIR:–I have again con­clud­ed to re­lieve Gen­er­al Cur­tis. I see no oth­er way to avoid the worst con­se­quences there. I think of Gen­er­al Schofield as his suc­ces­sor, but I do not wish to take the mat­ter of a suc­ces­sor out of the hands of your­self and Gen­er­al Hal­leck.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, May 11, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL DIX:

Do the Rich­mond pa­pers have any­thing about Grand Gulf or Vicks­burg?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL BUT­TER­FIELD. [Ci­pher.] WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, May 11, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BUT­TER­FIELD:

About what dis­tance is it from the ob­ser­va­to­ry we stopped at last Thurs­day to the line of en­emies’ works you ranged the glass up­on for me?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 12, 1863.

GOV­ER­NOR SEY­MOUR, Al­bany, N.Y.:

Dr. Swin­burne and Mr. Gillett are here, hav­ing been re­fused, as they say, by the War De­part­ment, per­mis­sion to go to the Army of the Po­tomac. They now ap­peal to me, say­ing you wish them to go. I sup­pose they have been ex­clud­ed by a rule which ex­pe­ri­ence has in­duced the de­part­ment to deem prop­er; still they shall have leave to go, if you say you de­sire it. Please an­swer.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO A. G. HEN­RY.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON May 13,1863.

Dr. A. G. HEN­RY, Metropoli­tan Ho­tel, New York:

Gov­er­nor Chase’s feel­ings were hurt by my ac­tion in his ab­sence. Smith is re­moved, but Gov­er­nor Chase wish­es to name his suc­ces­sor, and asks a day or two to make the des­ig­na­tion.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL J. HOOK­ER.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, D.C. May 14, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER, Com­mand­ing.

MY DEAR SIR:–When I wrote on the 7th, I had an im­pres­sion that pos­si­bly by an ear­ly move­ment you could get some ad­van­tage from the sup­posed facts that the en­emy’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions were dis­turbed and that he was some­what de­ranged in po­si­tion. That idea has now passed away, the en­emy hav­ing re-​es­tab­lished his com­mu­ni­ca­tions, re­gained his po­si­tions, and ac­tu­al­ly re­ceived re­in­force­ments. It does not now ap­pear prob­able to me that you can gain any­thing by an ear­ly re­new­al of the at­tempt to cross the Rap­pa­han­nock. I there­fore shall not com­plain if you do no more for a time than to keep the en­emy at bay and out of oth­er mis­chief by men­aces and oc­ca­sion­al cav­al­ry raids, if prac­ti­ca­ble, and to put your own army in good con­di­tion again. Still, if in your own clear judg­ment you can re­new the at­tack suc­cess­ful­ly, I do not mean to re­strain you. Bear­ing up­on this last point, I must tell you that I have some painful in­ti­ma­tions that some of your corps and di­vi­sion com­man­ders are not giv­ing you their en­tire con­fi­dence. This would be ru­inous, if true, and you should there­fore, first of all, as­cer­tain the re­al facts be­yond all pos­si­bil­ity of doubt.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

FAC­TION­AL QUAR­RELS

TELE­GRAM TO H. T. BLOW AND OTH­ERS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 15, 1863.

HON. H. T. BLOW, C. D. DRAKE, AND OTH­ERS, St. Louis, Mo.:

Your despatch of to-​day is just re­ceived. It is very painful to me that you in Mis­souri can­not or will not set­tle your fac­tion­al quar­rel among your­selves. I have been tor­ment­ed with it be­yond en­durance for months by both sides. Nei­ther side pays the least re­spect to my ap­peals to your rea­son. I am now com­pelled to take hold of the case.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO JAMES GUTHRIE.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, May 16, 1863.

HON. JAMES GUTHRIE, Louisville, Ky.:

Your despatch of to-​day is re­ceived. I per­son­al­ly know noth­ing of Colonel Churchill, but months ago and more than once he has been rep­re­sent­ed to me as ex­ert­ing a mis­chievous in­flu­ence at Saint Louis, for which rea­son I am un­will­ing to force his con­tin­uance there against the judg­ment of our friends on the ground; but if it will oblige you, he may come to and re­main at Louisville up­on tak­ing the oath of al­le­giance, and your pledge for his good be­hav­ior.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON CITY, May 16, 1863.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:–The com­man­der of the De­part­ment at St. Louis has or­dered sev­er­al per­sons south of our mil­itary lines, which or­der is not dis­ap­proved by me. Yet at the spe­cial re­quest of the HON. James Guthrie I have con­sent­ed to one of the num­ber, Samuel Churchill, re­main­ing at Louisville, Ky., up­on con­di­tion of his tak­ing the oath of al­le­giance and Mr. Gut­lirie’s word of hon­or for his good be­hav­ior.

Yours tru­ly, A. LIN­COLN.

OR­DERS SEND­ING C. L. VAL­LANDIGHAM BE­YOND MIL­ITARY LINES. [Ci­pher.]

UNIT­ED STATES MIL­ITARY TELE­GRAPH, May 10, 1863. By tele­graph from Wash­ing­ton, 9.40 PM, 1863

TO MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Com­mand­ing De­part­ment of Ohio.

SIR:–The Pres­ident di­rects that with­out de­lay you send C. L. Val­landigham un­der se­cure guard to the Head­quar­ters of Gen­er­al Rose­crans, to be put by him be­yond our mil­itary lines; and in case of his re­turn with­in our lines, he be ar­rest­ed and kept in close cus­tody for the term spec­ified in his sen­tence.

By or­der of the Pres­ident: E. R. S. CAN­BY, As­sis­tant Ad­ju­tant-​Gen­er­al.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, May 20, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL A. B. BURN­SIDE, Com­mand­ing De­part­ment of Ohio, Cincin­nati, O.

Your despatch of three o’clock this af­ter­noon to the Sec­re­tary of War has been re­ceived and shown to the Pres­ident. He thinks the best dis­po­si­tion to be made of Val­landigham is to put him be­yond the lines, as di­rect­ed in the or­der trans­mit­ted to you last evening, and di­rects that you ex­ecute that or­der by send­ing him for­ward un­der se­cure guard with­out de­lay to Gen­er­al Rose­crans.

By or­der of the Pres­ident: ED. R. S. CAN­BY, Brigadier-​Gen­er­al

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WASH­ING­TON, May 20, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS:

Yours of yes­ter­day in re­gard to Colonel Hag­gard is re­ceived. I am anx­ious that you shall not mis­un­der­stand me. In no case have I in­tend­ed to cen­sure you or to ques­tion your abil­ity. In Colonel Hag­gard’s case I meant no more than to sug­gest that pos­si­bly you might have been mis­tak­en in a point that could [be] cor­rect­ed. I fre­quent­ly make mis­takes my­self in the many things I am com­pelled to do hasti­ly.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WASH­ING­TON, May 21, 1863. 4.40 PM.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS:

For cer­tain rea­sons it is thought best for Rev. Dr. Jaque­ss not to come here.

Present my re­spects to him, and ask him to write me ful­ly on the sub­ject he has in con­tem­pla­tion.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL S. A. HURL­BUT.

WASH­ING­TON, May 22, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HURL­BUT, Mem­phis, Tenn.:

We have news here in the Rich­mond news­pa­pers of 20th and 21st, in­clud­ing a despatch from Gen­er­al Joe John­ston him­self, that on the 15th or 16th–a lit­tle con­fu­sion as to the day–Grant beat Pem­ber­ton and [W. W.] Lor­ing near Ed­wards Sta­tion, at the end of a nine hours’ fight, driv­ing Pem­ber­ton over the Big Black and cut­ting Lor­ing off and driv­ing him south to Crys­tal Springs, twen­ty-​five miles be­low Jack­son. Joe John­ston tele­graphed all this, ex­cept about Lor­ing, from his camp be­tween Brownsville and Lex­ing­ton, on the 18th. An­oth­er despatch in­di­cates that Grant was mov­ing against John­ston on the 18th.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO AN­SON STAGER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., May 24, 1863.10.40

AN­SON STAGER, Cleve­land, O.:

Late last night Fuller tele­graphed you, as you say, that “the Stars and Stripes float over Vicks­burg and the vic­to­ry is com­plete.” Did he know what he said, or did he say it with­out know­ing it? Your despatch of this af­ter­noon throws doubt up­on it.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO COLONEL HAG­GARD.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON. May 25, 1863.

COLONEL HAG­GARD, Nashville, Tenn.:

Your despatch to Green Adams has just been shown me. Gen­er­al Rose­crans knows bet­ter than we can know here who should be in charge of the Fifth Cav­al­ry.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., May 26, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Cincin­nati, O.:

Your despatch about Camp­bell, Lyle, and oth­ers re­ceived and post­pone­ment or­dered by you ap­proved. I will con­sid­er and tele­graph you again in a few days.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 27, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK, Bal­ti­more, Md.:

Let the ex­ecu­tion of William B. Comp­ton be respit­ed or sus­pend­ed till fur­ther or­der from me, hold­ing him in safe cus­tody mean­while. On re­ceiv­ing this no­ti­fy me.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR BUCK­ING­HAM.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 27,1863.

GOV­ER­NOR BUCK­ING­HAM, Hart­ford, Conn.:

The ex­ecu­tion of War­ren Whitemarch is here­by respit­ed or sus­pend­ed un­til fur­ther or­der from me, he to be held in safe cus­tody mean­while. On re­ceiv­ing this no­ti­fy me.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, May 27,1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Murfrees­bor­ough, Tenn.:

Have you any­thing from Grant? Where is For­rest’s head­quar­ters?

A. LIN­COLN.

TO GEN­ER­AL SCHOFIELD.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON May 27, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL JOHN M. SCHOFIELD.

MY DEAR SIR:–Hav­ing re­lieved Gen­er­al Cur­tis and as­signed you to the com­mand of the De­part­ment of the Mis­souri, I think it may be of some ad­van­tage for me to state why I did it. I did not re­lieve Gen­er­al Cur­tis be­cause of any full con­vic­tion that he had done wrong by com­mis­sion or omis­sion. I did it be­cause of a con­vic­tion in my mind that the Union men of Mis­souri, con­sti­tut­ing, when unit­ed, a vast ma­jor­ity of the whole peo­ple, have en­tered in­to a pesti­lent fac­tion­al quar­rel among them­selves–Gen­er­al Cur­tis, per­haps not of choice, be­ing the head of one fac­tion and Gov­er­nor Gam­ble that of the oth­er. Af­ter months of la­bor to rec­on­cile the dif­fi­cul­ty, it seemed to grow worse and worse, un­til I felt it my du­ty to break it up some­how; and as I could not re­move Gov­er­nor Gam­ble, I had to re­move Gen­er­al Cur­tis. Now that you are in the po­si­tion, I wish you to un­do noth­ing mere­ly be­cause Gen­er­al Cur­tis or Gov­er­nor Gam­ble did it, but to ex­er­cise your own judg­ment, and do right for the pub­lic in­ter­est. Let your mil­itary mea­sures be strong enough to re­pel the in­vad­er and keep the peace, and not so strong as to un­nec­es­sar­ily ha­rass and per­se­cute the peo­ple. It is a dif­fi­cult role, and so much greater will be the hon­or if you per­form it well. If both fac­tions, or nei­ther, shall abuse you, you will prob­ably be about right. Be­ware of be­ing as­sailed by one and praised by the oth­er.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, May 27, 1863.11 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Have you Rich­mond pa­pers of this morn­ing? If so, what news?

A. LIN­COLN.

TO ERAS­TUS CORN­ING.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 28, 1863.

HON. ERAS­TUS CORN­ING, Al­bany, N.Y.:

The let­ter of your­self and oth­ers dat­ed the 19th and in­clos­ing the res­olu­tions of a pub­lic meet­ing held at Al­bany on the 16th, was re­ceived night be­fore last. I shall give the res­olu­tions the con­sid­er­ation you ask, and shall try to find time and make a re­spect­ful re­sponse.

Your obe­di­ent ser­vant,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL W. S. ROSE­CRANS.

WASH­ING­TON, May 28, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL ROSE­CRANS, Murfrees­bor­ough, Tenn..

I would not push you to any rash­ness, but I am very anx­ious that you do your ut­most, short of rash­ness, to keep Bragg from get­ting off to help John­ston against Grant.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR JOHN­SON.

WASH­ING­TON, May 29, 1863.

GOV­ER­NOR AN­DREW JOHN­SON, Louisville, Ky.:

Gen­er­al Burn­side has been fre­quent­ly in­formed late­ly that the di­vi­sion un­der Gen­er­al Get­ty can­not be spared. I am sor­ry to have to tell you this, but it is true, and can­not be helped.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO J. K. DUBOIS AND OTH­ERS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, May 29, 1863.

MESSRS. JESSE K. DUBOIS, O. M. HATCH, JOHN WILLIAMS, JA­COB BUNN, JOHN BUNN, GEORGE R. WE­BER, WILLIAM YATES, S. M. CUL­LOM, CHARLES W. MA­TH­ENY, WILLIAM F. ELKIN, FRAN­CIS SPRINGER, B. A. WAT­SON, ELIPHALET HAW­LEY, AND JAMES CAMP­BELL.

GEN­TLE­MEN:–Agree among your­selves up­on any two of your own num­ber– one of whom to be quar­ter­mas­ter and the oth­er to be com­mis­sary to serve at Spring­field, Illi­nois, and send me their names, and I will ap­point them.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL A. E. BURN­SIDE.

WASH­ING­TON, May 29, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BURN­SIDE, Cincin­nati, O.:

Your despatch of to-​day re­ceived. When I shall wish to su­per­sede you I will let you know. All the Cab­inet re­gret­ted the ne­ces­si­ty of ar­rest­ing, for in­stance, Val­landigham, some per­haps doubt­ing there was a re­al ne­ces­si­ty for it; but, be­ing done, all were for see­ing you through with it.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO COLONEL LUD­LOW. [Ci­pher.] EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 1, 1863.

COLONEL LUD­LOW, Fort Mon­roe:

Richard­son and Brown, cor­re­spon­dents of the Tri­bune cap­tured at Vicks­burg, are de­tained at Rich­mond. Please as­cer­tain why they are de­tained, and get them off if you can.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 2, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

It is said that Philip Mar­graf, in your army, is un­der sen­tence to be shot on Fri­day the 5th in­stant as a de­sert­er. If so please send me up the record of his case at once.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL U.S. GRANT.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, June 2, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL GRANT, Vicks­burg, via Mem­phis:

Are you in com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Gen­er­al Banks? Is he com­ing to­ward you or go­ing far­ther off? Is there or has there been any­thing to hin­der his com­ing di­rect­ly to you by wa­ter from Alexan­dria?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER. [Ci­pher.] EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 4,1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Let ex­ecu­tion of sen­tences in the cas­es of Dai­ly, Mar­graf, and Har­ring­ton be respit­ed till fur­ther or­ders from me, they re­main­ing in close cus­tody mean­while.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL BUT­TER­FIELD.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., June 4, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL BUT­TER­FIELD:

The news you send me from the Rich­mond Sen­tinel of the 3d must be great­ly if not whol­ly in­cor­rect. The Thurs­day men­tioned was the 28th, and we have despatch­es here di­rect­ly from Vicks­burg of the 28th, 29th, 30th, and 31st; and, while they speak of the siege pro­gress­ing, they speak of no as­sault or gen­er­al fight­ing what­ev­er, and in fact they so speak as to al­most ex­clude the idea that there can have been any since Mon­day the 25th, which was not very heavy. Nei­ther do they men­tion any de­mand made by Grant up­on Pem­ber­ton for a sur­ren­der. They speak of our troops as be­ing in good health, con­di­tion, and spir­its. Some of them do say that Banks has Port Hud­son in­vest­ed.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO SEC­RE­TARY STAN­TON.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 4, 1863.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF WAR.

MY DEAR SIR:–I have re­ceived ad­di­tion­al despatch­es, which, with for­mer ones, in­duce me to be­lieve we should re­voke or sus­pend the or­der sus­pend­ing the Chica­go Times; and if you con­cur in opin­ion, please have it done.

Yours tru­ly,

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C. JUNE 5, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Yours of to-​day was re­ceived an hour ago. So much of pro­fes­sion­al mil­itary skill is req­ui­site to an­swer it that I have turned the task over to Gen­er­al Hal­leck. He promis­es to per­form it with his ut­most care. I have but one idea which I think worth sug­gest­ing to you, and that is, in case you find Lee com­ing to the north of the Rap­pa­han­nock, I would by no means cross to the south of it. If he should leave a rear force at Fred­er­icks­burg, tempt­ing you to fall up­on it, it would fight in en­trench­ments and have you at ad­van­tage, and so, man for man, worst you at that point, While his main force would in some way be get­ting an ad­van­tage of you north­ward. In one word, I would not take any risk of be­ing en­tan­gled up on the riv­er like an ox jumped half over a fence and li­able to be torn by dogs front and rear with­out a fair chance to gore one way or to kick the oth­er.

If Lee would come to my side of the riv­er I would keep on the same side and fight him, or act on the de­fen­sive, ac­cord­ing as might be my es­ti­mate of his strength rel­ative­ly to my own. But these are mere sug­ges­tions, which I de­sire to be con­trolled by the judg­ment of your­self and Gen­er­al Hal­leck.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. GRIM­SLEY.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 6, 1863.

Mrs. ELIZ­ABETH J. GRIM­SLEY, Spring­field, Ill.:

Is your John ready to en­ter the naval school? If he is, tele­graph me his full name.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX,

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D.C., June 6, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL Dix, Fort Mon­roe, Va.:

By notic­ing the news you send from the Rich­mond Dis­patch of this morn­ing you will see one of the very lat­est despatch­es says they have noth­ing re­li­able from Vicks­burg since Sun­day. Now we here have a despatch from there Sun­day and oth­ers of al­most ev­ery day pre­ced­ing since the in­vest­ment, and while they show the siege pro­gress­ing they do not show any gen­er­al fight­ing since the 21st and 22d. We have noth­ing from Port Hud­son lat­er than the 29th when things looked rea­son­ably well for us. I have thought this might be of some in­ter­est to you.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 8, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL Dix, Fort Mon­roe:

We have despatch­es from Vicks­burg of the 3d. Siege pro­gress­ing. No gen­er­al fight­ing re­cent­ly. All well. Noth­ing new from Port Hud­son.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DIX.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D.C. JUNE 8, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL Dix, Fort Mon­roe:

The sub­stance of news sent of the fight­ing at Port Hud­son on the 27th we have had here three or four days, and I sup­posed you had it al­so, when I said this morn­ing, “No news from Port Hud­son.” We knew that Gen­er­al Sher­man was wound­ed, but we hoped not so dan­ger­ous­ly as your despatch rep­re­sents. We still have noth­ing of that Rich­mond news­pa­per sto­ry of Kir­by Smith cross­ing and of Banks los­ing an arm.

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO J. P. HALE.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 9, 1863.

HON. JOHN P. HALE, Dover, N. H.:

I be­lieve that it was up­on your rec­om­men­da­tion that B. B. Bunker was ap­point­ed at­tor­ney for Neva­da Ter­ri­to­ry. I am pressed to re­move him on the ground that he does not at­tend to the of­fice, nor in fact pass much time in the Ter­ri­to­ry. Do you wish to say any­thing on the sub­ject?

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 9, 1863.

MRS. LIN­COLN, Philadel­phia, Pa.:

Think you had bet­ter put “Tad’s” pis­tol away. I had an ug­ly dream about him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D.C. June 9, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

I am told there are 50 in­cen­di­ary shells here at the ar­se­nal made to fit the 100 pounder Par­rott gun now with you. If this be true would you like to have the shells sent to you?

A. LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 10, 1863

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Your long despatch of to-​day is just re­ceived. If left to me, I would not go south of the Rap­pa­han­nock up­on Lee’s mov­ing north of it. If you had Rich­mond in­vest­ed to-​day you would not be able to take it in twen­ty days; mean­while your com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and with them your army, would be ru­ined. I think Lee’s army, and not Rich­mond, is your true ob­jec­tive point. If he comes to­wards the up­per Po­tomac, fol­low on his flank, and on the in­side track, short­en­ing your lines while he length­ens his. Fight him, too, when op­por­tu­ni­ty of­fers. If he stay where he is, fret him and fret him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 11,1863.

MRS. LIN­COLN, Philadel­phia:

Your three despatch­es re­ceived. I am very well and am glad to know that you and “Tad” are so.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER. [Ci­pher.] EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, JUNE 12, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

If you can show me a tri­al of the in­cen­di­ary shells on Sat­ur­day night, I will try to join you at 5 P.M. that day An­swer.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO ERAS­TUS CORN­ING AND OTH­ERS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 12, 1863.

HON. ERAS­TUS CORN­ING AND OTH­ERS.

GEN­TLE­MEN:–Your let­ter of May 19, in­clos­ing the res­olu­tions of a pub­lic meet­ing held at Al­bany, New York, on the 16th of the same month, was re­ceived sev­er­al days ago.

The res­olu­tions, as I un­der­stand them, are re­solv­able in­to two propo­si­tions–first, the ex­pres­sion of a pur­pose to sus­tain the cause of the Union, to se­cure peace through vic­to­ry, and to sup­port the ad­min­is­tra­tion in ev­ery con­sti­tu­tion­al and law­ful mea­sure to sup­press the re­bel­lion; and, sec­ond­ly, a dec­la­ra­tion of cen­sure up­on the ad­min­is­tra­tion for sup­posed un­con­sti­tu­tion­al ac­tion, such as the mak­ing of mil­itary ar­rests. And from the two propo­si­tions a third is de­duced, which is that the gen­tle­men com­pos­ing the meet­ing are re­solved on do­ing their part to main­tain our com­mon gov­ern­ment and coun­try, de­spite the fol­ly or wicked­ness, as they may con­ceive, of any ad­min­is­tra­tion. This po­si­tion is em­inent­ly pa­tri­ot­ic, and as such I thank the meet­ing, and con­grat­ulate the na­tion for it. My own pur­pose is the same; so that the meet­ing and my­self have a com­mon ob­ject, and can have no dif­fer­ence, ex­cept in the choice of means or mea­sures for ef­fect­ing that ob­ject.

And here I ought to close this pa­per, and would close it, if there were no ap­pre­hen­sion that more in­ju­ri­ous con­se­quences than any mere­ly per­son­al to my­self might fol­low the cen­sures sys­tem­at­ical­ly cast up­on me for do­ing what, in my view of du­ty, I could not for­bear. The res­olu­tions promise to sup­port me in ev­ery con­sti­tu­tion­al and law­ful mea­sure to sup­press the re­bel­lion; and I have not know­ing­ly em­ployed, nor shall know­ing­ly em­ploy, any oth­er. But the meet­ing, by their res­olu­tions, as­sert and ar­gue that cer­tain mil­itary ar­rests, and pro­ceed­ings fol­low­ing them, for which I am ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble, are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al. I think they are not. The res­olu­tions quote from the Con­sti­tu­tion the def­ini­tion of trea­son, and al­so the lim­it­ing safe­guards and guar­an­tees there­in pro­vid­ed for the cit­izen on tri­al for trea­son, and on his be­ing held to an­swer for cap­ital or oth­er­wise in­fa­mous crimes, and in crim­inal pros­ecu­tions his right to a speedy and pub­lic tri­al by an im­par­tial ju­ry. They pro­ceed to re­solve “that these safe­guards of the rights of the cit­izen against the pre­ten­sions of ar­bi­trary pow­er were in­tend­ed more es­pe­cial­ly for his pro­tec­tion in times of civ­il com­mo­tion.” And, ap­par­ent­ly to demon­strate the propo­si­tion, the res­olu­tions pro­ceed: “They were se­cured sub­stan­tial­ly to the En­glish peo­ple af­ter years of pro­tract­ed civ­il war, and were adopt­ed in­to our Con­sti­tu­tion at the close of the Rev­olu­tion.” Would not the demon­stra­tion have been bet­ter if it could have been tru­ly said that these safe­guards had been adopt­ed and ap­plied dur­ing the civ­il wars and dur­ing our Rev­olu­tion, in­stead of af­ter the one and at the close of the oth­er? I too am de­vot­ed­ly for them af­ter civ­il war, and be­fore Civ­il war, and at all times, “ex­cept when, in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty may re­quire” their sus­pen­sion. The res­olu­tions pro­ceed to tell us that these safe­guards “have stood the test of sev­en­ty-​six years of tri­al un­der our re­pub­li­can sys­tem, un­der cir­cum­stances which show that, while they con­sti­tute the foun­da­tion of all free gov­ern­ment, they are the el­ements of the en­dur­ing sta­bil­ity of the re­pub­lic.” No one de­nies that they have so stood the test up to the be­gin­ning of the present re­bel­lion, if we ex­cept a cer­tain oc­cur­rence at New Or­leans here­after to be men­tioned; nor does any one ques­tion that they will stand the same test much longer af­ter the re­bel­lion clos­es. But these pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion have no ap­pli­ca­tion to the case we have in hand, be­cause the ar­rests com­plained of were not made for trea­son–that is, not for the trea­son de­fined in the Con­sti­tu­tion, and up­on the con­vic­tion of which the pun­ish­ment is death–nor yet were they made to hold per­sons to an­swer for any cap­ital or oth­er­wise in­fa­mous crimes; nor were the pro­ceed­ings fol­low­ing, in any con­sti­tu­tion­al or le­gal sense, “crim­inal pros­ecu­tions.” The ar­rests were made on to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent grounds, and the pro­ceed­ings fol­low­ing ac­cord­ed with the grounds of the ar­rests. Let us con­sid­er the re­al case with which we are deal­ing, and ap­ply to it the parts of the Con­sti­tu­tion plain­ly made for such cas­es.

Pri­or to my in­stal­la­tion here it had been in­cul­cat­ed that any State had a law­ful right to se­cede from the na­tion­al Union, and that it would be ex­pe­di­ent to ex­er­cise the right when­ev­er the devo­tees of the doc­trine should fail to elect a pres­ident to their own lik­ing. I was elect­ed con­trary to their lik­ing; and ac­cord­ing­ly, so far as it was legal­ly pos­si­ble, they had tak­en sev­en States out of the Union, had seized many of the Unit­ed States forts, and had fired up­on the Unit­ed States flag, all be­fore I was in­au­gu­rat­ed, and, of course, be­fore I had done any of­fi­cial act what­ev­er. The re­bel­lion thus be­gun soon ran in­to the present civ­il war; and, in cer­tain re­spects, it be­gan on very un­equal terms be­tween the par­ties. The in­sur­gents had been prepar­ing for it more than thir­ty years, while the gov­ern­ment had tak­en no steps to re­sist them. The for­mer had care­ful­ly con­sid­ered all the means which could be turned to their ac­count. It un­doubt­ed­ly was a well-​pon­dered re­liance with them that in their own un­re­strict­ed ef­fort to de­stroy Union, Con­sti­tu­tion and law, all to­geth­er, the gov­ern­ment would, in great de­gree, be re­strained by the same Con­sti­tu­tion and law from ar­rest­ing their progress. Their sym­pa­thiz­ers in­vad­ed all de­part­ments of the gov­ern­ment and near­ly all com­mu­ni­ties of the peo­ple. From this ma­te­ri­al, un­der cov­er of “lib­er­ty of speech,” “lib­er­ty of the press,” and “habeas cor­pus,” they hoped to keep on foot amongst us a most ef­fi­cient corps of spies, in­form­ers, sup­pli­ers, and aiders and abet­tors of their cause in a thou­sand ways. They knew that in times such as they were in­au­gu­rat­ing, by the Con­sti­tu­tion it­self the “habeas cor­pus” might be sus­pend­ed; but they al­so knew they had friends who would make a ques­tion as to who was to sus­pend it; mean­while their spies and oth­ers might re­main at large to help on their cause. Or if, as has hap­pened, the Ex­ec­utive should sus­pend the writ with­out ru­inous waste of time, in­stances of ar­rest­ing in­no­cent per­sons might oc­cur, as are al­ways like­ly to oc­cur in such cas­es; and then a clam­or could be raised in re­gard to this, which might be at least of some ser­vice to the in­sur­gent cause. It need­ed no very keen per­cep­tion to dis­cov­er this part of the en­emies pro­gram, so soon as by open hos­til­ities their ma­chin­ery was fair­ly put in mo­tion. Yet, thor­ough­ly im­bued with a rev­er­ence for the guar­an­teed rights of in­di­vid­uals, I was slow to adopt the strong mea­sures which by de­grees I have been forced to re­gard as be­ing with­in the ex­cep­tions of the Con­sti­tu­tion, and as in­dis­pens­able to the pub­lic safe­ty. Noth­ing is bet­ter known to his­to­ry than that courts of jus­tice are ut­ter­ly in­com­pe­tent to such cas­es. Civ­il courts are or­ga­nized chiefly for tri­als of in­di­vid­uals- -or, at most, a few in­di­vid­uals act­ing in con­cert, and this in qui­et times, and on charges of crimes well de­fined in the law. Even in times of peace bands of horse-​thieves and rob­bers fre­quent­ly grow too nu­mer­ous and pow­er­ful for the or­di­nary courts of jus­tice. But what com­par­ison, in num­bers have such bands ev­er borne to the in­sur­gent sym­pa­thiz­ers even in many of the loy­al States? Again, a ju­ry too fre­quent­ly has at least one mem­ber more ready to hang the pan­el than to hang the traitor. And yet again, he who dis­suades one man from vol­un­teer­ing, or in­duces one sol­dier to desert, weak­ens the Union cause as much as he who kills a Union sol­dier in bat­tle. Yet this dis­sua­sion or in­duce­ment may be so con­duct­ed as to be no de­fined crime of which any civ­il court would take cog­nizance.

Ours is a case of re­bel­lion–so called by the res­olu­tions be­fore me– in fact, a clear, fla­grant, and gi­gan­tic case of re­bel­lion; and the pro­vi­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion that “the priv­ilege of the writ of habeas cor­pus shall not be sus­pend­ed un­less when, in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty may re­quire it,” is the pro­vi­sion which spe­cial­ly ap­plies to our present case. This pro­vi­sion plain­ly at­tests the un­der­stand­ing of those who made the Con­sti­tu­tion that or­di­nary courts of jus­tice are in­ad­equate to “cas­es of re­bel­lion”–at­tests their pur­pose that, in such cas­es, men may be held in cus­tody whom the courts, act­ing on or­di­nary rules, would dis­charge. Habeas cor­pus does not dis­charge men who are proved to be guilty of de­fined crime, and its sus­pen­sion is al­lowed by the Con­sti­tu­tion on pur­pose that men may be ar­rest­ed and held who can not be proved to be guilty of de­fined crime, “when, in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty may re­quire it.”

This is pre­cise­ly our present case–a case of re­bel­lion where­in the pub­lic safe­ty does re­quire the sus­pen­sion–In­deed, ar­rests by pro­cess of courts and ar­rests in cas­es of re­bel­lion do not pro­ceed al­to­geth­er up­on the same ba­sis. The for­mer is di­rect­ed at the small per­cent­age of or­di­nary and con­tin­uous per­pe­tra­tion of crime, while the lat­ter is di­rect­ed at sud­den and ex­ten­sive up­ris­ings against the gov­ern­ment, which, at most, will suc­ceed or fail in no great length of time. In the lat­ter case ar­rests are made not so much for what has been done as for what prob­ably would be done. The lat­ter is more for the pre­ven­tive and less for the vin­dic­tive than the for­mer. In such cas­es the pur­pos­es of men are much more eas­ily un­der­stood than in cas­es of or­di­nary crime. The man who stands by and says noth­ing when the per­il of his gov­ern­ment is dis­cussed, can­not be mis­un­der­stood. If not hin­dered, he is sure to help the en­emy; much more if he talks am­bigu­ous­ly–talks for his coun­try with “buts,” and “ifs,” and “ands.” Of how lit­tle val­ue the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sion I have quot­ed will be ren­dered if ar­rests shall nev­er be made un­til de­fined crimes shall have been com­mit­ted, may be il­lus­trat­ed by a few no­table ex­am­ples: Gen­er­al John C. Breck­in­ridge, Gen­er­al Robert E. Lee, Gen­er­al Joseph E. John­ston, Gen­er­al John B. Ma­grud­er, Gen­er­al William B. Pre­ston, Gen­er­al Si­mon B. Buck­ner, and Com­modore Franklin Buchanan, now oc­cu­py­ing the very high­est places in the rebel war ser­vice, were all with­in the pow­er of the gov­ern­ment since the re­bel­lion be­gan, and were near­ly as well known to be traitors then as now. Un­ques­tion­ably if we had seized and had them the in­sur­gent cause would be much weak­er. But no one of them had then com­mit­ted any crime de­fined in the law. Ev­ery one of them, if ar­rest­ed, would have been dis­charged on habeas cor­pus were the writ al­lowed to op­er­ate. In view of these and sim­ilar cas­es, I think the time not un­like­ly to come when I shall be blamed for hav­ing made too few ar­rests rather than too many.

By the third res­olu­tion the meet­ing in­di­cate their opin­ion that mil­itary ar­rests may be con­sti­tu­tion­al in lo­cal­ities where re­bel­lion ac­tu­al­ly ex­ists, but that such ar­rests are un­con­sti­tu­tion­al in lo­cal­ities where re­bel­lion or in­sur­rec­tion does not ac­tu­al­ly ex­ist. They in­sist that such ar­rests shall not be made “out­side of the lines of nec­es­sary mil­itary oc­cu­pa­tion and the scenes of in­sur­rec­tion.” Inas­much, how­ev­er, as the Con­sti­tu­tion it­self makes no such dis­tinc­tion, I am un­able to be­lieve that there is any such con­sti­tu­tion­al dis­tinc­tion. I con­cede that the class of ar­rests com­plained of can be con­sti­tu­tion­al on­ly when, in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty may re­quire them; and I in­sist that in such cas­es–they are con­sti­tu­tion­al wher­ev­er the pub­lic safe­ty does re­quire them, as well in places to which they may pre­vent the re­bel­lion ex­tend­ing, as in those where it may be al­ready pre­vail­ing; as well where they may re­strain mis­chievous in­ter­fer­ence with the rais­ing and sup­ply­ing of armies to sup­press the re­bel­lion as where the re­bel­lion may ac­tu­al­ly be; as well where they may re­strain the en­tic­ing men out of the army as where they would pre­vent mutiny in the army; equal­ly con­sti­tu­tion­al at all places where they will con­duce to the pub­lic safe­ty as against the dan­gers of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion. Take the par­tic­ular case men­tioned by the meet­ing. It is as­sert­ed in sub­stance that Mr. Val­landigham was, by a mil­itary com­man­der, seized and tried “for no oth­er rea­son than words ad­dressed to a pub­lic meet­ing in crit­icism of the course of the ad­min­is­tra­tion, and in con­dem­na­tion of the mil­itary or­ders of the gen­er­al.” Now, if there be no mis­take about this, if this as­ser­tion is the truth, and the whole truth, if there were no oth­er rea­son for the ar­rest, then I con­cede that the ar­rest was wrong. But the ar­rest, as I un­der­stand, was made for a very dif­fer­ent rea­son. Mr. Val­landigham avows his hos­til­ity to the war on the part of the Union; and his ar­rest was made be­cause he was la­bor­ing, with some ef­fect, to pre­vent the rais­ing of troops, to en­cour­age de­ser­tions from the army, and to leave the re­bel­lion with­out an ad­equate mil­itary force to sup­press it. He was not ar­rest­ed be­cause he was dam­ag­ing the po­lit­ical prospects of the ad­min­is­tra­tion or the per­son­al in­ter­ests of the com­mand­ing gen­er­al, but be­cause he was dam­ag­ing the army, up­on the ex­is­tence and vig­or of which the life of the na­tion de­pends. He was war­ring up­on the mil­itary, and thus gave the mil­itary con­sti­tu­tion­al ju­ris­dic­tion to lay hands up­on him. If Mr. Val­landigham was not dam­ag­ing the mil­itary pow­er of the coun­try, then his ar­rest was made on mis­take of fact, which I would be glad to cor­rect on rea­son­ably sat­is­fac­to­ry ev­idence.

I un­der­stand the meet­ing whose res­olu­tions I am con­sid­er­ing to be in fa­vor of sup­press­ing the re­bel­lion by mil­itary force–by armies. Long ex­pe­ri­ence has shown that armies can­not be main­tained un­less de­ser­tion shall be pun­ished by the se­vere penal­ty of death. The case re­quires, and the law and the Con­sti­tu­tion sanc­tion, this pun­ish­ment. Must I shoot a sim­ple-​mind­ed sol­dier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a wily ag­ita­tor who in­duced him to desert. This is none the less in­ju­ri­ous when ef­fect­ed by get­ting a fa­ther, or broth­er, or friend in­to a pub­lic meet­ing, and there work­ing up­on his feel­ings till he is per­suad­ed to write the sol­dier boy that he is fight­ing in a bad cause, for a wicked ad­min­is­tra­tion of a con­temptible gov­ern­ment, too weak to ar­rest and pun­ish him if he shall desert. I think that, in such a case, to si­lence the ag­ita­tor and save the boy is not on­ly con­sti­tu­tion­al, but with­al a great mer­cy.

If I be wrong on this ques­tion of con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er, my er­ror lies in be­liev­ing that cer­tain pro­ceed­ings are con­sti­tu­tion­al when, in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty re­quires them, which would not be con­sti­tu­tion­al when, in ab­sence of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion, the pub­lic safe­ty does not re­quire them: in oth­er words, that the Con­sti­tu­tion is not in its ap­pli­ca­tion in all re­spects the same in cas­es of re­bel­lion or in­va­sion in­volv­ing the pub­lic safe­ty as it is in times of pro­found peace and pub­lic se­cu­ri­ty. The Con­sti­tu­tion it­self makes the dis­tinc­tion, and I can no more be per­suad­ed that the gov­ern­ment can con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly take no strong mea­sures in time of re­bel­lion, be­cause it can be shown that the same could not be law­ful­ly tak­en in times of peace, than I can be per­suad­ed that a par­tic­ular drug is not good medicine for a sick man be­cause it can be shown to not be good food for a well one. Nor am I able to ap­pre­ci­ate the dan­ger ap­pre­hend­ed by the meet­ing, that the Amer­ican peo­ple will by means of mil­itary ar­rests dur­ing the re­bel­lion lose the right of pub­lic dis­cus­sion, the lib­er­ty of speech and the press, the law of ev­idence, tri­al by ju­ry, and habeas cor­pus through­out the in­def­inite peace­ful fu­ture which I trust lies be­fore them, any more than I am able to be­lieve that a man could con­tract so strong an ap­petite for emet­ics dur­ing tem­po­rary ill­ness as to per­sist in feed­ing up­on them dur­ing the re­main­der of his health­ful life.

In giv­ing the res­olu­tions that earnest con­sid­er­ation which you re­quest of me, I can­not over­look the fact that the meet­ing speak as “Democrats.” Nor can I, with full re­spect for their known in­tel­li­gence, and the fair­ly pre­sumed de­lib­er­ation with which they pre­pared their res­olu­tions, be per­mit­ted to sup­pose that this oc­curred by ac­ci­dent, or in any way oth­er than that they pre­ferred to des­ig­nate them­selves “Democrats” rather than “Amer­ican cit­izens.” In this time of na­tion­al per­il I would have pre­ferred to meet you up­on a lev­el one step high­er than any par­ty plat­form, be­cause I am sure that from such more el­evat­ed po­si­tion we could do bet­ter bat­tle for the coun­try we all love than we pos­si­bly can from those low­er ones where, from the force of habit, the prej­udices of the past, and self­ish hopes of the fu­ture, we are sure to ex­pend much of our in­ge­nu­ity and strength in find­ing fault with and aim­ing blows at each oth­er. But since you have de­nied me this I will yet be thank­ful for the coun­try’s sake that not all Democrats have done so. He on whose dis­cre­tionary judg­ment Mr. Val­landigham was ar­rest­ed and tried is a Demo­crat, hav­ing no old par­ty affin­ity with me, and the judge who re­ject­ed the con­sti­tu­tion­al view ex­pressed in these res­olu­tions, by re­fus­ing to dis­charge Mr. Val­landigham on habeas cor­pus is a Demo­crat of bet­ter days than these, hav­ing re­ceived his ju­di­cial man­tle at the hands of Pres­ident Jack­son. And still more: of all those Democrats who are nobly ex­pos­ing their lives and shed­ding their blood on the bat­tle-​field, I have learned that many ap­prove the course tak­en with Mr. Val­landigham, while I have not heard of a sin­gle one con­demn­ing it. I can­not as­sert that there are none such. And the name of Pres­ident Jack­son re­calls an in­stance of per­ti­nent his­to­ry. Af­ter the bat­tle of New Or­leans, and while the fact that the treaty of peace had been con­clud­ed was well known in the city, but be­fore of­fi­cial knowl­edge of it had ar­rived, Gen­er­al Jack­son still main­tained mar­tial or mil­itary law. Now that it could be said that the war was over, the clam­or against mar­tial law, which had ex­ist­ed from the first, grew more fu­ri­ous. Among oth­er things, a Mr. Louail­li­er pub­lished a de­nun­ci­ato­ry news­pa­per ar­ti­cle. Gen­er­al Jack­son ar­rest­ed him. A lawyer by the name of Morel pro­cured the Unit­ed States Judge Hall to or­der a writ of habeas cor­pus to re­lease Mr. Louail­li­er. Gen­er­al Jack­son ar­rest­ed both the lawyer and the judge. A Mr. Hol­lan­der ven­tured to say of some part of the mat­ter that “it was a dirty trick.” Gen­er­al Jack­son ar­rest­ed him. When the of­fi­cer un­der­took to serve the writ of habeas cor­pus, Gen­er­al Jack­son took it from him, and sent him away with a copy. Hold­ing the judge in cus­tody a few days, the gen­er­al sent him be­yond the lim­its of his en­camp­ment, and set him at lib­er­ty with an or­der to re­main till the rat­ifi­ca­tion of peace should be reg­ular­ly an­nounced, or un­til the British should have left the south­ern coast. A day or two more elapsed, the rat­ifi­ca­tion of the treaty of peace was reg­ular­ly an­nounced, and the judge and oth­ers were ful­ly lib­er­at­ed. A few days more, and the judge called Gen­er­al Jack­son in­to court and fined him $1000 for hav­ing ar­rest­ed him and the oth­ers named. The Gen­er­al paid the fine, and then the mat­ter rest­ed for near­ly thir­ty years, when Congress re­fund­ed prin­ci­pal and in­ter­est. The late Sen­ator Dou­glas, then in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, took a lead­ing part in the de­bates, in which the con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tion was much dis­cussed. I am not pre­pared to say whom the jour­nals would show to have vot­ed for the mea­sure.

It may be re­marked–first, that we had the same Con­sti­tu­tion then as now; sec­ond­ly, that we then had a case of in­va­sion, and now we have a case of re­bel­lion; and, third­ly, that the per­ma­nent right of the peo­ple to pub­lic dis­cus­sion, the lib­er­ty of speech and of the press, the tri­al by ju­ry, the law of ev­idence, and the habeas cor­pus suf­fered no detri­ment what­ev­er by that con­duct of Gen­er­al Jack­son, or its sub­se­quent ap­proval by the Amer­ican Congress.

And yet, let me say that, in my own dis­cre­tion, I do not know whether I would have or­dered the ar­rest of Mr. Val­landigham. While I can­not shift the re­spon­si­bil­ity from my­self, I hold that, as a gen­er­al rule, the com­man­der in the field is the bet­ter judge of the ne­ces­si­ty in any par­tic­ular case. Of course I must prac­tice a gen­er­al di­rec­to­ry and re­vi­so­ry pow­er in the mat­ter.

One of the res­olu­tions ex­press­es the opin­ion of the meet­ing that ar­bi­trary ar­rests will have the ef­fect to di­vide and dis­tract those who should be unit­ed in sup­press­ing the re­bel­lion, and I am specif­ical­ly called on to dis­charge Mr. Val­landigham. I re­gard this as, at least, a fair ap­peal to me on the ex­pe­di­en­cy of ex­er­cis­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­er which I think ex­ists. In re­sponse to such ap­peal I have to say, it gave me pain when I learned that Mr. Val­landigham had been ar­rest­ed (that is, I was pained that there should have seemed to be a ne­ces­si­ty for ar­rest­ing him), and that it will af­ford me great plea­sure to dis­charge him so soon as I can by any means be­lieve the pub­lic safe­ty will not suf­fer by it.

I fur­ther say that, as the war pro­gress­es, it ap­pears to me, opin­ion and ac­tion, which were in great con­fu­sion at first, take shape and fall in­to more reg­ular chan­nels, so that the ne­ces­si­ty for strong deal­ing with them grad­ual­ly de­creas­es. I have ev­ery rea­son to de­sire that it should cease al­to­geth­er, and far from the least is my re­gard for the opin­ions and wish­es of those who, like the meet­ing at Al­bany, de­clare their pur­pose to sus­tain the gov­ern­ment in ev­ery con­sti­tu­tion­al and law­ful mea­sure to sup­press the re­bel­lion. Still, I must con­tin­ue to do so much as may seem to be re­quired by the pub­lic safe­ty.

A. LIN­COLN.

TO THE SEC­RE­TARY OF THE TREA­SURY.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, June 14, 1863.

HON. SEC­RE­TARY OF THE TREA­SURY.

SIR:–Your note of this morn­ing is re­ceived. You will co-​op­er­ate by the rev­enue cut­ters un­der your di­rec­tion with the navy in ar­rest­ing rebel depre­da­tions on Amer­ican com­merce and trans­porta­tion and in cap­tur­ing rebels en­gaged there­in.

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL TYLER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, June 14, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL TYLER, Mar­tins­burg: Is Mil­roy in­vest­ed so that he can­not fall back to Harp­er’s Fer­ry?

A. LIN­COLN.

RE­SPONSE TO A “BE­SIEGED” GEN­ER­AL

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL TYLER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, June 14, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL TYLER, Mar­tins­burg:

If you are be­sieged, how do you despatch me? Why did you not leave be­fore be­ing be­sieged?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL KEL­LEY.

WASH­ING­TON, June 14, 1863. 1.27 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL KEL­LEY, Harp­er’s Fer­ry:

Are the forces at Winch­ester and Mar­tins­burg mak­ing any ef­fort to get to you?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 14, 1863.3.50 P.M.,

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

So far as we can make out here, the en­emy have Muroy sur­round­ed at Winch­ester, and Tyler at Mar­tins­burg. If they could hold out a few days, could you help them? If the head of Lee’s army is at Mar­tins­burg and the tail of it on the plank-​road be­tween Fred­er­icks­burg and Chan­cel­lorsville, the an­imal must be very slim some­where; could you not break him?

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL R. C. SCHENCK.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, June 14, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL SCHENCK:

Get Gen­er­al Mil­roy from Winch­ester to Harp­er’s Fer­ry, if pos­si­ble. He will be “gob­bled up” if he re­mains, if he is not al­ready past sal­va­tion.

A. LIN­COLN, Pres­ident, Unit­ed States.

NEEDS NEW TIRES ON HIS CAR­RIAGE

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, June 15, 1863.

MRS. LIN­COLN, Philadel­phia, Pa.:

Tol­er­ably well. Have not rode out much yet, but have at last got new tires on the car­riage wheels and per­haps shall ride out soon.

A. LIN­COLN.

CALL FOR 100,000 MILI­TIA TO SERVE FOR SIX MONTHS, JUNE 15, 1863.

BY THE PRES­IDENT OF THE UNIT­ED STATES OF AMER­ICA:

A Procla­ma­tion

Where­as the armed in­sur­rec­tionary com­bi­na­tions now ex­ist­ing in sev­er­al of the States are threat­en­ing to make in­roads in­to the States of Mary­land, West Vir­ginia, Penn­syl­va­nia, and Ohio, re­quir­ing im­me­di­ate­ly an ad­di­tion­al mil­itary force for the ser­vice of the Unit­ed States:

Now, there­fore, I, Abra­ham Lin­coln, Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States and Com­man­der-​in-​Chief of the Army and Navy there­of and of the mili­tia of the sev­er­al States when called in­to ac­tu­al ser­vice, do here­by call in­to the ser­vice of the Unit­ed States 100,000 mili­tia from the States fol­low­ing, name­ly:

From the State of Mary­land, 10,000; from the State of Penn­syl­va­nia, 50,000; from the State of Ohio, 30,000; from the State of West Vir­ginia, 10,000–to be mus­tered in­to the ser­vice of the Unit­ed States forth­with and to serve for a pe­ri­od of six months from the date of such muster in­to said ser­vice, un­less soon­er dis­charged; to be mus­tered in as in­fantry, ar­tillery, and cav­al­ry, in pro­por­tions which will be made known through the War De­part­ment, which De­part­ment will al­so des­ig­nate the sev­er­al places of ren­dezvous. These mili­tia to be or­ga­nized ac­cord­ing to the rules and reg­ula­tions of the vol­un­teer ser­vice and such or­ders as may here­after be is­sued. The States afore­said will be re­spec­tive­ly cred­it­ed un­der the en­roll­ment act for the mili­tia ser­vices en­tered un­der this procla­ma­tion. In tes­ti­mo­ny where­of ……………

ABRA­HAM LIN­COLN

TELE­GRAM TO P. KAPP AND OTH­ERS.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 10, 1863

FRED­ER­ICK KAPP AND OTH­ERS, New York:

The Gov­er­nor of New York promis­es to send us troops, and if he wish­es the as­sis­tance of Gen­er­al Fre­mont and Gen­er­al Sigel, one or both, he can have it. If he does not wish them it would but breed con­fu­sion for us to set them to work in­de­pen­dent­ly of him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL MEAGHER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 16, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL T. FRAN­CIS MEAGHER, New York:

Your despatch re­ceived. Shall be very glad for you to raise 3000 Irish troops if done by the con­sent of and in con­cert with Gov­er­nor Sey­mour.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO MRS. LIN­COLN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 16, 1863.

MRS. LIN­COLN, Philadel­phia:

It is a mat­ter of choice with your­self whether you come home. There is no rea­son why you should not, that did not ex­ist when you went away. As bear­ing on the ques­tion of your com­ing home, I do not think the raid in­to Penn­syl­va­nia amounts to any­thing at all.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO COLONEL BLISS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 16, 1863.

COL. WILLIAM S. BLISS, New York Ho­tel:

Your despatch ask­ing whether I will ac­cept “the Loy­al Brigade of the North” is re­ceived. I nev­er heard of that brigade by name and do not know where it is; yet, pre­sum­ing it is in New York, I say I will glad­ly ac­cept it, if ten­dered by and with the con­sent and ap­pro­ba­tion of the Gov­er­nor of that State. Oth­er­wise not.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WASH­ING­TON, June 16, 1863.10 P.M.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

To re­move all mis­un­der­stand­ing, I now place you in the strict mil­itary re­la­tion to Gen­er­al Hal­leck of a com­man­der of one of the armies to the gen­er­al-​in-​chief of all the armies. I have not in­tend­ed dif­fer­ent­ly, but as it seems to be dif­fer­ent­ly un­der­stood I shall di­rect him to give you or­ders and you to obey them.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER.

WAR DE­PART­MENT WASH­ING­TON D. C., June 17, 1863.

MA­JOR-​GEN­ER­AL HOOK­ER:

Mr. Eck­ert, su­per­in­ten­dent in the tele­graph of­fice, as­sures me that he has sent and will send you ev­ery­thing that comes to the of­fice.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO JOSHUA TEVIS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 17, 1863.

JOSHUA TEVIS, Esq., U. S. At­tor­ney, Frank­fort, Ky.:

A Mr. Burkn­er is here shov­ing a record and ask­ing to be dis­charged from a suit in San Fran­cis­co, as bail for one Thomp­son. Un­less the record shown me is de­fec­tive­ly made out I think it can be suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed against. Please ex­am­ine the case care­ful­ly and, if you shall be of opin­ion it can­not be sus­tained, dis­miss it and re­lieve me from all trou­ble about it. Please an­swer.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GOV­ER­NOR TOD. [Ci­pher.] EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON,

June 18, 1863.

GOV­ER­NOR D. TOD, Colum­bus, O.:

Yours re­ceived. I deeply re­gret that you were not renom­inat­ed, not that I have aught against Mr. Brough. On the con­trary, like your­self, I say hur­rah for him.

A. LIN­COLN.

TELE­GRAM TO GEN­ER­AL DING­MAN.

WAR DE­PART­MENT, WASH­ING­TON, D. C., June 18, 1863.

GEN­ER­AL A. DING­MAN, Belleville, C. W.:

Thanks for your of­fer of the Fif­teenth Bat­tal­ion. I do not think Wash­ing­ton is in dan­ger.

A. LIN­COLN

TO B. B. MAL­HIOT AND OTH­ERS.

EX­EC­UTIVE MAN­SION, WASH­ING­TON, June 19, 1863.

MESSRS. B. B. MAL­HIOT, BRADISH JOHN­SON, AND THOMAS COTTMAN.