all the governors you
designate to forward all available force. So telegraphed you. Have you
received these messages? Answer immediately.

A. LINCOLN.

PROCLAMATION FORBIDDING INTERCOURSE WITH REBEL STATES, AUGUST 16, 1861.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:

A Proclamation.

Whereas on the fifteenth day of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-one,
the President of the United States, in view of an insurrection against the
laws, Constitution, and government of the United States which had broken
out within the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida,
Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and in pursuance of the provisions
of the act entitled "An act to provide for calling forth the militia
to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel
invasions, and to repeal the act now in force for that purpose," approved
February twenty-eighth, seventeen hundred and ninety-five, did call forth
the militia to suppress said insurrection, and to cause the laws of the
Union to be duly executed, and the insurgents have failed to disperse
by the time directed by the President; and whereas such insurrection
has since broken out and yet exists within the States of Virginia, North
Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas; and whereas the insurgents in all the
said States claim to act under the authority thereof, and such claim is
not disclaimed or repudiated by the persons exercising the functions of
government in such State or States, or in the part or parts thereof in
which such combinations exist, nor has such insurrection been suppressed
by said States:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in
pursuance of an act of Congress approved July thirteen, eighteen hundred
and sixty-one, do hereby declare that the inhabitants of the said States
of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Florida (except
the inhabitants of that part of the State of Virginia lying west of the
Allegheny Mountains, and of such other parts of that State, and the other
States hereinbefore named, as may maintain a loyal adhesion to the Union
and the Constitution, or may be time to time occupied and controlled by
forces of the United States engaged in the dispersion of said insurgents),
are in a state of insurrection against the United States, and that all
commercial intercourse between the same and the inhabitants the