By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.
This was immediately contradicted by the Government, as follows:
To the Public.
Department of State, Washington, D. C.
May 18, 1864.
A paper purporting to be a proclamation of the President,
countersigned by the Secretary of State, and bearing date of
the 17th inst. is reported to this Department as having
appeared in the New York "World" of this date. This paper is
an absolute forgery. No proclamation of this kind has been
made, or proposed to be made, by the President, or issued, or
proposed to be issued, by the State Department, or any other
Department of the Government.
WM. H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State.
Under the head "Freedom of Press" Appleton's Encyclopedia for 1864
gives twelve columns of space to this matter. The excitement resulted in
the greatest distress. Gold advanced four or five per cent., a panic
prevailed, and great calamity, of course, followed.
Soon thereafter we seized every telegraph instrument and office record
in the Department, and arrested the officers and clerks. I became so
tired with the extraordinary labor and loss of sleep, that I actually
fell asleep while standing at a desk in one of the offices. I had heard
of such experiences, but had believed it impossible.
The object of seizing the newspapers, telegraphic instruments and
records, was to prevent the disaster that must follow the further
spreading of the impression created by the bogus message, that our
Government was in dire distress.
Copperhead conspirators and Confederate agents here and in Canada, had
been and were at work to undermine us by every means. Distress to us,
however brought about, was their purpose. They sought to create in the
minds of the masses the idea that the war was a failure.
These conspirators had tried to use the conscription, in 1863, to
disrupt us, and they were again trying to scare the people with a
prospective draft, in 1864, to unsettle the public mind before the
Presidential election, then soon to occur (in November).
Governor Seymour relentlessly pursued General Dix, seeking to have him
indicted for arresting (he claimed) illegally, persons party to the
fraud. But the grand jury refused to indict him. Seymour claimed that he
(Seymour) was trying to preserve _personal liberty_, from the general
government's encroachments, which was also his attitude in
Vallandigham's case in 1863.
The New York "World" and "The Journal of Commerce" were the newspapers
involved in the affair, but the odium should not attach to the present
papers.
The bogus proclamation spread faster and further than the denial of it
possibly could.