Whereas at the late session Congress passed a bill "to guarantee to
certain States whose governments have been usurped or overthrown a
republican form of government," a copy of which is hereunto annexed;
and
Whereas the said bill was presented to the President of the United
States for his approval less than one hour before the _sine die
_adjournment of said session, and was not signed by him; and
Whereas the said bill contains, among other things, a plan for restoring
the States in rebellion to their proper practical relation in the Union,
which plan expresses the sense of Congress upon that subject, and which
plan it is now thought fit to lay before the people for their
consideration:
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do
proclaim, declare, and make known that while I am (as I was in December
last, when, by proclamation, I propounded a plan for restoration)
unprepared by a formal approval of this bill to be inflexibly committed
to any single plan of restoration, and while I am also unprepared to
declare that the free State constitutions and governments already
adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana shall be set aside and
held for naught, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens
who have set up the same as to further effort, or to declare a
constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States, but
am at the same time sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional
amendment abolishing slavery throughout the nation may be adopted,
nevertheless I am fully satisfied with the system for restoration
contained in the bill as one very proper plan for the loyal people of
any State choosing to adopt it, and that I am and at all times shall be
prepared to give the Executive aid and assistance to any such people so
soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been
suppressed in any such State and the people thereof shall have
sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the
laws of the United States, in which cases military governors will be
appointed with directions to proceed according to the bill.
In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal
of the United States to be affixed.
[SEAL.]
Done at the city of Washington, this 8th day of July, A.D. 1864, and of
the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.