selves to vice and immorality."
The first general order issued by the Father of his Country after the
Declaration of Independence indicates the spirit in which our institutions
were founded and should ever be defended:

"The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to
live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights
and liberties of his country."

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BLAIR

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 17,1862.

HON. F. P. BLAIR:

Your brother says you are solicitous to be ordered to join General
McLernand. I suppose you are ordered to Helena; this means that you are
to form part of McLernand's expedition as it moves down the river; and
General McLernand is so informed. I will see General Halleck as to whether
the additional force you mention can go with you.

A. LINCOLN.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

WASHINGTON, D. C., November 18, 1861.

MAJOR-GENERAL Dix, Fort Monroe:

Please give me your best opinion as to the number of the enemy now at
Richmond and also at Petersburg.

A. LINCOLN.

TO GOVERNOR SHEPLEY.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, November 21, 1862.

HON. G. F. SHEPLEY.

DEAR SIR:--Dr. Kennedy, bearer of this, has some apprehension that
Federal officers not citizens of Louisiana may be set up as candidates for
Congress in that State. In my view there could be no possible object in
such an election. We do not particularly need members of Congress from
there to enable us to get along with legislation here. What we do want is
the conclusive evidence that respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing
to be members of Congress and to swear support to the Constitution, and
that other respectable citizens there are willing to vote for them and
send them. To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives,
elected, as would be understood (and perhaps really so), at the point of
the bayonet, would be disgusting and outrageous; and were I a member of
Congress here, I would vote against admitting any such man to a seat.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN,

ORDER PROHIBITING THE EXPORT OF ARMS AND MUNITIONS OF WAR.

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,

November 21, 1862.

Ordered, That no arms, ammunition, or munitions of war be cleared or
allowed to be exported from the United States until further orders. That
any clearance for arms, ammunition, or munitions of war issued heretofore
by the