A Proclamation Whereas, the twenty-first section of the act of Congress, approved on the 3d instant, entitled "An Act to amend the several acts heretofore passed to provide for the enrolling and calling out the national forces and for other purposes," requires that in addition to the other lawful penalties of the crime of desertion from the military or naval service, all persons who have deserted the military or naval service of the United States who shall not return to said service or report themselves to a provost-marshal within sixty days after the proclamation hereinafter mentioned, shall be deemed and taken to have voluntarily relinquished and forfeited their citizenship and their right to become citizens, and such deserters shall be forever incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under the United States, or of exercising any rights of citizens thereof; and all persons who shall hereafter desert the military or naval service, and all persons who, being duly enrolled, shall depart the jurisdiction of the district in which they are enrolled, or go beyond the limits of the United States with intent to avoid any draft into the military or naval service duly ordered, shall be liable to the penalties of this section; and the President is hereby authorized and required forthwith, on the passage of this act, to issue his proclamation setting forth the provisions of this section, in which proclamation the President is requested to notify all deserters returning within sixty days as aforesaid that they shall be pardoned on condition of returning to their regiments and companies, or to such other organizations as they may be assigned to, until they shall have served for a period of time equal to their original term of enlistment:
Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do issue this my proclamation as required by said act, ordering and requiring all deserters to return to their proper posts; and I do hereby notify them that all deserters who shall within sixty days from the date of this proclamation, viz., on or before the 10th day of May, 1865, return to service or report themselves to a provost-marshal, shall be pardoned on condition that they return to their regiments or companies or to such other organization as they may be assigned to, and serve the remainder of their original terms of enlistment, and in addition thereto a period equal to the time lost by desertion.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed...............
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State TELEGRAM TO H. T. BLOW.
WASHINGTON, March 13, 1865.
HON. HENRY T. BLOW, Saint Louis, Mo.:
A Miss E. Snodgrass, who was banished from Saint Louis in May,1863, wishes to take the oath and return home. What say you?
A. LINCOLN.
LETTER TO THURLOW WEED, MARCH 15, 1865.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, D. C.
DEAR Mr. WEED:
Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech and on the recent inaugural address. I expect the latter to wear as well as perhaps better than--anything I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.
Truly yours, A. LINCOLN.
TELEGRAM TO COLONEL ROUGH AND OTHERS.
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, D. C., March 17, 1865.
COL. R. M. ROUGH AND OTHERS, Chicago, Ill.:
Yours received. The best I can do with it is, to refer it to the War Department. The Rock Island case referred to, was my individual enterprise; and it caused so much difficulty in so many ways that I promised to never undertake another.
A. LINCOLN.
ADDRESS TO AN INDIANA REGIMENT, MARCH 17, 1865.
FELLOW-CITIZENS:--It will be but a very few words that I shall undertake to say. I was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois; and now I am here, where it is my business to care equally for the good people of all the States. I am glad to see an Indiana regiment on this day able to present the captured flag to the Governor of Indiana. I am not disposed, in saying this, to make a distinction between the States, for all have done equally well.
There are but few views or aspects of this great war upon which I have not said or written something whereby my own opinions might be known. But there is one--the recent attempt of our erring brethren, as they are sometimes called, to employ the negro to fight for them.
I have neither written nor made a speech on that subject, because that was their business, not mine, and if I had a wish on the subject, I had not the power to introduce it, or make it effective.
