HDQRS. NORTHERN DISTRICT, DEPT. OF THE SOUTH,
May 11, 1862.

SIR: General Hunter having sent to this office an order, of which the following is a copy, viz:

HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH,
Hilton Head, S. C., May 9, 1862.

Brigadier General H. W. BENHAM,

Northern District:

GENERAL: I am instructed by the major-general commanding to request that you will order the commanding officers in your district to send immediately to these headquarters, under a guard, all the able-bodied negroes capable of bearing arms within the limits of their several commands.

I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

ED. W. SMITH,

Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

The general commanding directs that you immediately take the proper steps for carrying it into effect within your command and that they will report at the earliest moment to these headquarters the probabilities as to numbers, &c. This order will not include the servants of officers or those now actually in the employment of the Quartermaster's Department.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

[A. B. ELY,]

Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

(Copies sent to Generals Stevens and Wright, Colonels Chatfield, Rosa, and Williams.)

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas, by my proclamation of the nineteenth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, it was declared that the ports of certain States, including those of Beaufort, in the State of North Carolina; Port Royal, in the State of South Carolina, and New Orleans, in the State of Louisiana, were, for reasons therein set forth, intended to be placed under blockade; and whereas the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans have since been blockade, but as the blockade of the same ports may now be safely relaxed with advantage to the interests of commerce:

Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, pursuant to the authority in me vested by the fifty section of the act of Congress approved on the thirteenth of july last, entitled "An act further to provide for the collection of duties on imports, and for other purposes," do hereby declare that the blockade of the said ports of Beaufort, Port Royal, and New Orleans shall so far cease and determine, from and after the first day of June next, that commercial intercourse with those ports, except as to persons, things, and information contraband of war, may from that time be carried on, subject to the laws of the United States, and to the limitations and in pursuance of the regulations which are prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury in his order of this date, which is appended to this proclamation.

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