Under the authority conferred by the two preceding acts of Congress the President, on the 22nd of July, issued the following order:

First. Ordered, "That military commanders within the States, of Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, in an orderly manner, seize and use any property, real or personal, which may be necessary or convenient for their several commands as supplies, or for other military purposes; and that while property may be destroyed for proper military objects, none shall be destroyed in wantonness or malice."

Second. "That military and naval commanders shall employ as laborers, within and from said States, so many persons of African descent as can be advantageously used for military and naval purposes, giving them reasonable wages for their labor."

Third. "That as to both property and persons of African descent, accounts shall be kept sufficiently accurate and in detail to show quantities and amounts, and from whom both property and such persons shall have come, as a basis upon which compensation can be made in proper cases; and the several departments of this government shall attend to and perform their appropriate parts toward the execution of these orders."

On the 22nd day of September, 1862, the President issued a proclamation a announcing:

First. "That it was his purpose, upon the next meommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits."

Second. "That the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the government existing there, should be continued."

Third. "That on the first day of January following all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, should be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom od such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom."

Fourth. "That the Executive would, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, should then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, should on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State should have participated, should, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof were not then in rebellion against the United States."

On the 1st day of January, 1863, the immortal decree emancipation a proclaimed freedom to the blacks of all the States declared in rebelliception of cert Louisiana.

a See Appendix, Doc.36.