Whereas the twenty-first section of the act of Congress approved on the
3d instant, entitled "An act to amend the several acts heretofore passed
to provide for the enrolling and calling out the national forces and
for other purposes," requires "that, in addition to the other lawful
penalties of the crime of desertion from the military or naval service,
all persons who have deserted the military or naval service of the
United States who shall not return to said service or report themselves
to a provost-marshal within sixty days after the proclamation
hereinafter mentioned shall be deemed and taken to have voluntarily
relinquished and forfeited their rights of citizenship and their rights
to become citizens, and such deserters shall be forever incapable of
holding any office of trust or profit under the United States or of
exercising any rights of citizens thereof; and all persons who shall
hereafter desert the military or naval service, and all persons who,
being duly enrolled, shall depart the jurisdiction of the district in
which he is enrolled or go beyond the limits of the United States with
intent to avoid any draft into the military or naval service duly
ordered, shall be liable to the penalties of this section. And the
President is hereby authorized and required, forthwith on the passage of
this act, to issue his proclamation setting forth the provisions of this
section, in which proclamation the President is requested to notify all
deserters returning within sixty days as aforesaid that they shall be
pardoned on condition of returning to their regiments and companies or
to such other organizations as they may be assigned to until they shall
have served for a period of time equal to their original term of
enlistment."
Now, therefore, be it known that I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, do issue this my proclamation, as required by said act,
ordering and requiring all deserters to return to their proper posts;
and I do hereby notify them that all deserters who shall, within sixty
days from the date of this proclamation, viz, on or before the 10th day
of May, 1865, return to service or report themselves to a
provost-marshal shall be pardoned, on condition that they return to
their regiments and companies or to such other organizations as they may
be assigned to and serve the remainder of their original terms of
enlistment and in addition thereto a period equal to the time lost by
desertion.
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 11th day of March, A.D. 1865, and
of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.