conditions of any persons held to domestic service; and in order that there may be no ground for mistake or pretext for misrepresentation, commanders of regiments and corps have been instructed not to permit any such persons to come within their lines. The command of the expedition is intrusted to Brigadier General Henry H. Lockwood, of Delaware, a State identical in some of the distinctive features of its social organization with your own. Portions of his force come from counties in Maryland bordering on one of yours. From him and from them you may be assured of the sympathy of near neighborhood as well as friends, if you do not repel it by hostile resistance or attack. Their mission is to assert the authority of the United States; to re-open your intercourse with the loyal States, and especially with Maryland, which has just proclaimed her devotion to the Union by the most triumphant vote in her political annals; to restore to commerce its accustomed guides, by re-establishing the lights on your coats; to afford you a free export for the products of your labor, and a free ingress for the necessaries and comforts of life which you require in exchange; and, in a word, to put an end to the embarrassments and restrictions brought upon you by a causeless and unjustifiable rebellion.

If the calamities of intestine war, which are desolating other districts of Virginia and have already crimsoned her fields with fraternal blood, fall also upon you, it will not be the fault of the Government. It asks only that its authority may be recognized. It sends among you a force too strong to be successfully opposed-a force which cannot be resisted in any other spirit than that wantonness and malignity. If there are any among you who, rejecting all overtures of friendship, thus provoke any among you who, rejecting all overtures of friendship, thus provoke retaliation and draw down upon themselves consequences which the Government is most anxious to avert, to their account must be laid the blood which may be shed and the desolation which may be brought upon peaceful homes. On all who are thus reckless of the obligations of humanity and duty, and on all who are found in arms, the severest punishment warranted by the laws of war will be visited. To those who remain in the quiet pursuit of their domestic occupations the public authorities assure all they can give-peace, freedom from annoyance, protection from foreign and internal enemies, a guaranty of all constitutional and legal rights, and the blessings of a just and parental Government.

JOHN A. DIX,

Major-General, Commanding.

HEADQUARTERS, BALTIMORE, MD.,
November 13, 1861.

HEADQUARTERS,

Baltimore, November 15, 1861.

DEAR GENERAL: I inclose a copy of a proclamation I sent down to General Lockwood.* It was sent into Virginia to-day. I have given him instructions to make prisoners of all persons taken with arms in their hands, and I have instructed him also to withhold from all who disregard the friendly overtures contained in the proclamation and persist in acts of hostility the promised immunity from punishment. The tone of the proclamation is intended to effect the object set forth in my letter of the 8th, to General Marcy.

General Lockwood will have 4,500 men to-morrow.. He has the flower

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*See p. 431.

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