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Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the parishes of St. Ber nard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans,) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth,) and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

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 first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and [L. S.] sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

[No. 18.]

Feb. 28, 1863.

By the President of the United States of America:

A PROCLAMATION.

Extraordinary Whereas objects of interest to the United States require that session of the Ben- the Senate should be convened at twelve o'clock on the fourth of March next, to receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it on the part of the Executive:

ate convened for
March 4, 1863.

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 fourth day of March next, at twelve 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, in the [L. S.] year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

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

And whereas it is the duty of nations, as well as of 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,

a

Day set apart as

day of national ing, and prayer.

humiliation, fast

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 [L. 8.] sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.

By the President:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

PRIVATE ACTS OF THE THIRTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS

OF THE

UNITED STATES,

Passed at the third session, which was begun and held at the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, on Monday, the first day of December, A. D. 1862, and ended on Wednesday, the fourth day of March, A. D. 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States.

HANNIBAL HAMLIN, Vice-President, and President of the Senate. SOLOMON FOOT was elected President of the Senate, pro tempore, on the eighteenth day of February, and so acted until the end of the session. GALUSHA A. GROW, Speaker of the House of Representatives.

CHAPTER II.

AN ACT for the relief of the owners of the French brig Jules et Marie.

Dec. 15, 1862.

paid owners of the

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That there Damages to be be paid, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appro-Jules et Marie." priated, to the order of the proper functionary of the government of his Majesty the Emperor of the French, the sum of nine thousand five hundred dollars, in coin, as full compensation to the owners of the French brig Jules et Marie, or their legal representatives, for damages received by the said brig in a collision with the United States war steamer San Jacinto, on the third day of November last; which collision was occasioned, in the opinion of a joint naval commission to whom the claim was referred, by the failure of the San Jacinto seasonably to reverse her engine. Approved December 15, 1862.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN ACT to indemnify certain citizens of the United States, residing in the January 7, 1863.
State of Delaware, for expenses incurred by them in defence of the
United States.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Certain citizens Secretary of the Treasury be, and he is hereby, authorized and indemnified for ex

of Delaware to be

of the U. States.

penses in defence directed, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, to pay to the Farmers' Bank of Delaware, at Dover, or the duly authorized agent thereof, any amount not exceeding the sum of thirteen hundred and seventy-eight dollars, borrowed of said bank by Alden B. Richardson and others, citizens of the State of Delaware, and by them expended for the enrolling, subsisting, clothing, and equipping of company D of the first regiment of Delaware volunteers employed in aiding to suppress the present insurrection against the United States; and also to the Bank of Smyrna, at Smyrna, Delaware, or the duly authorized agent thereof, an amount not exceeding the sum of thirteen hundred and seventy-eight dollars, borrowed of said last-mentioned bank by George W. Cummins and others, citizens of said State of Delaware, and by them expended for the enrolling, subsisting, clothing, and equipping company H of said first regiment of DelOnly expenses aware volunteers employed in said service as aforesaid: Provided, properly made to That said Secretary shall pay only so much of the expenditures be paid. as aforesaid as, upon examination, he shall be satisfied were properly made.

Approved January 7, 1863.

January 23, 1863.

Payment to John

vices as acting sec

Territory.

CHAPTER XII.

AN ACT for the relief of John B. Motley.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of B. Motley for ser- the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the retary of Nebraska sum of two hundred and ninety-eight dollars and eighty-seven cents be, and the same is hereby, appropriated, out of any money in the treasury not otherwise appropriated, to be paid to John B. Motley, of Omaha City, in the Territory of Nebraska, for compensation in full for his services as acting secretary of said Territory from March twenty-three, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight, to July twelve, eighteen hundred and fifty-eight. Approved January 23, 1863.

January 30, 1863.

H. Pine to be cred

ited with $2,500 on a judgment against

them.

CHAPTER XV.

AN ACT for the relief of William B. Snowhook and others.

Sureties of Chas. Whereas a judgment has been recovered in the United States circuit court of the northern district of Illinois against Thomas Hoyne, E. S. Smith, Isaac Cook, William B. Snowhook, and Richard J. Hamilton, as sureties of Charles H. Pine, late United States marshal for said district, in which judgment is included a sum of two thousand five hundred dollars, money advanced to said Pine by the government on the ninth day of November, anno Domini eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, after he had become known to the officers of the United States to be a defaulter in office, and after two of the said sureties had expressly notified the late Secretary of the Interior of such official delinquency, and protested against any further liability being incurred by them; all of which facts appear of record in the archives of the Department of the Interior: Therefore

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