and will do
no act or acts to repress such persons or any of them in any efforts
they may make for their actual freedom.

That the Executive will on the first day of January aforesaid, by
proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in
which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion
against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people
thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the
Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections,
wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States have
participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing
testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the
people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-chief of the Army
and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion
against the authority and government of the United States, and as a
fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do on
this first day of January, 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so
to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days
from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States
and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively are this
day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the Parishes of St. Bernard,
Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension,
Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans,
including the City of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the
forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the
counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York,
Princess Ann, and Norfolk and Portsmouth) and which excepted parts are
for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not
issued.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order
and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated
States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free, and
that the Executive government of the United States, including the
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain
the freedom of such persons.

And I her