Official: 

  ED. W. SMITH,
  Acting Assistant Adjutant-General.

And whereas the same is producing some excitement and misunderstanding: 

Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and declare that the Government of the United States had no knowledge, information, or belief of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation, nor has it yet any authentic information that the document is genuine; and, further, that neither General Hunter nor any other commander or person has been authorized by the Government of the United States to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free, and that the supposed proclamation now in question, whether genuine or false, is altogether void so far as respects such declaration.

I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the Government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field.  These are totally different questions from those of police regulations in armies and camps.

On the 6th day of March last, by a special message, I recommended to Congress the adoption of a joint resolution to be substantially as follows: 

Resolved, That the United States ought to cooperate with any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.

The resolution, in the language above quoted, was adopted by large majorities in both branches of Congress, and now stands an authentic, definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and people most immediately interested in the subject-matter.  To the people of those States I now earnestly appeal—­I do not argue; I beseech you to make the arguments for yourselves; you can not, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times.  I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics.  This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any.  It acts not the Pharisee.  The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything.  Will you not embrace it?  So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time as, in the providence of God, it is now your high privilege to do.  May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it.

In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.