kind personal letters to the commanders. The following, which he addressed to General Grant, contains a frank confession of erroneous judgment on the part of the President: EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, July 13, 1863. Major-General Grant-My Dear General-I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable services you have done the country. I write to say a word further. When you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you finally did-march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith, except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition, and the like, could succeed. When you got below, and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the river, and join General Banks, and when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment, that you were right and I was wrong. Yours, truly, A. LINCOLN. The proclamation which the President issued upon occasion of these victories is worthy of perusal on account of the truly grateful spirit with which it is imbued, and the appearance of that tenderness of heart and forgiving disposition which were such marked traits in Mr. Lincoln's character. PROCLAMATION. It has pleased Almighty God to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people, and to vouchsafe to the Army and the Navy of the United States, on the land and on the sea, victories so signal and so effective as to furnish reasonable grounds for augmented confidence that the Union of these States will be maintained, their Constitution preserved, and their peace and prosperity permanently secured; but these vic tories have been accorded, not without sacrifice of life, limb, and liberty, incurred by brave, patriotic, and loyal citizens. Domestic affliction, in every part of the country, follows in the train of these fearful bereavements. It is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father, and the power of his hand equally in these triumphs and these sorrows. Now, therefore, be it known, that I do set apart Thursday, the sixth day of August next, to be observed as a day for National Thanksgiving, praise, and prayer; and invite the peo ple of the United States to assemble on that occasion in their customary places of worship, and in the form approved by their own conscience, render the homage due to the Divine Majesty, for the wonderful things He has done in the nation's behalf, and invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit, to subdue the anger which has produced, and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion; to change the hearts of the insurgents; to guide the counsels of the Government with wisdom adequate to so great a national emergency, and to visit with tender care, and consolation, throughout the length and breadth of our land, all those who, through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges, have been brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate, and finally, to lead the whole nation through paths of repentance and submission to the Divine will, back to the perfect enjoyment of union and fraternal peace. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this 15th day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and [L. S.] sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States of America the eighty-eighth. By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State. PROTECTION TO NEGRO SOLDIERS. Although the rebels had from the beginning of the war made such use of their slaves in their armies as seemed good to them, they became furious when the Government proposed to put negroes actually into the ranks. They denounced this as a savage attempt to excite a servile insurrection, and they declared that negro soldiers, if taken prisoners, should not be regarded as ordinary prisoners of war, but be handed over to the local authorities of the State in which they were captured. This was only another way of saying that they should be put to death under the "black laws" of the Slave States. They carried out this threat in many instances; and in many more they slaughtered upon the field negro soldiers who had surrendered. Slow to anger, and shrinking with horror from bloody retaliation, President Lincoln, however, at last was driven to issue upon this subject the following order: WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT-GENERALS, OFFICE, General Order No. 252.-The following order of the President is published for the information and government of all concerned: EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, JUN 30. It is the duty of every Government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class, color or condition, and especially those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and the usages and customs of war, as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person on account of his color, and for no offence against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism and a crime against the civilization of the age. The Government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or enslave any one because of his color, the offence shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession. It is, therefore, ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed, and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war. By order of the Secretary of War. E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant-General. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. THE ANTI-DRAFT RIOTS-GOVERNOR SEYMOUR. A law was passed by Congress providing that the ranks. of the army should be filled by a draft. This was in accordance with a suggestion made by General McClellan, August 20th, 1861, when he was in command of the Army of the Potomac. The unscrupulous among the opponents of Mr. Lincoln's Administration, and the defenders of the rebellion generally in the Free States endeavored for months to stir up the people in resistance to this law. A provision of the law by which any drafted man might be furnished at his choice with a substitute by paying $300 to the Government, was particularly used as a means of exciting animosity, on the ground that it was directed against the poor who could not command that sum, while it favored the rich who could. The World, a daily journal of New York, which, according to evidence produced in a court of law, had been offered for sale, with the services of its editor, Mr. M. Marble, both to the supporters of the war and to its opponents, . and which, having been purchased by the latter, was chiefly known by its active encouragement of the rebellion, having even gone so far as to declare that it had "always main-tained" that the President "had no right to complain of the action of the Slave States," and that the people of New York" no more lived under the Constitution than the people now in Georgia," and having counseled its readers to provide themselves with arms, and keep in every family" a "good rifled musket, a few pounds of powder, and a hundred or so of shot," to "defend their homes and personal liberties from invasion from any quarter"-meaning, of course, from Canada-distinguished itself by its efforts to provoke active ill-feeling upon this subject. These efforts, directed by the malignant, and inflaming the thoughtless and the ignorant, were followed by events equally disastrous and significant. It would be superfluous to mention more in detail the Irish Anti-Draft Riots of July, 1863, in which New York, in the absence of its militia regiments, was for three days disgraced by scenes of blood, arson, and plunder. The riots were subdued by the vigorous action of the Metropolitan Police force, aided by a few troops brought up from the forts in the harbor, and order was secured by the arrival of some regiments from the army in the field, and the return of some of the militia. The draft, of course, was ordered to go on as soon as tranquillity was restored, all the more in consequence of the riots. But Horatio Seymour, then Governor of New York, who on more than one occasion seemed to be regarded by the rioters as their particular friend, thought, it would appear, that this assertion of its authority and this execution of an Act of Congress in the face of threatened violence was unbecoming, or at least impolitic, and he applied by letter to the President to have the draft postponed until the constitutionality of the law I could be decided by the judicial tribunals. To this the President replied by the following letter. EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 7, 1863. His Excellency Horatio Seymour, Governor of New York, Albany, N. Y.-Your communication of the 3d inst. has been received and |