and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing among other things, the following, to wit:

"That, on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixtythree, 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, shall be then, thenceforth, and for ever free, and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognise and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them in any effort they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people therein respectively shall then be in rebellion. against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall 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 shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed con-clusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of

the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and Government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do on this first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day of the first above mentioned order, and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas.
Texas.

Louisiana. except the parishes of St. Bernard, Placquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bone, 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, desig

nated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, and which accepted 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 recognise 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 labour 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, 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 favour of Almighty God.

In witness whereof 1 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 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.

Such a proclamation from the great "Big Sovereign" who was to swallow up all the little "State sovereigns" was a "nine days' wonder." Young and old, rich and poor, high and low, learned and illiterate, devoured its contents and discussed its merits. Some were elated with joy; others were disappointed and looked on it with sovereign pity and contempt. A first there was a ground swell of complacency and delight, not only with the assumption of his extraordinary powers, but the exercise of them; this, however, was only of short duration, as the conjuror's trick soon became manifest. The discovery that the proclamation was issued not as a righteous and noble act, but as a mere act of vengeance, in association with a new mode of warfare to be used as a brutum fulmen to the so-called “disloyal" slaveholder, but as a shield to protect the "loyal" ones, turned our modern.

"

"Moses" into a butt or target to be shot at, as the object of the world's merriment and scorn. On the strength of it, however, the violent partisans of the war raised the cry higher and higher that the South was fighting for slavery and the North against it ;" but as the mass of the Northern people declared that they were fighting for the Union and not for the negro, even so the South shewed that it cared but little for slavery, whilst it was mainly and chiefly anxious for its independence. This unmasked the jesuitical policy of the Federal administrators, and as General Lee and the late Stonewall Jackson took off the wheels of the Northern war chariots, and made them drag heavily, the Federal, administrators were compelled to adopt another move to cover their real object in the war, and to try to compass their wicked aims or designs.

THE ENLISTMENT AND IMPRESSMENT OF THE NEGRO.

This was the next move; and, as we had already predicted years before, and published to the world, it brought its counter-move in the adoption by the Southerners of freedom as the basis of their independence, as shown in the united resolve of the governors of the Confederate States, the decree of both houses of the Southern Congress, the telegram of General Grant, that "General Lee had picketed in front of his army coloured soldiers who