etent military or naval force, is in violation of the
neutral rights of the United States as defined by the law of nations as
well as of the treaties existing between the United States of America
and the aforesaid United States of Mexico:

Now, therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, do
hereby proclaim and declare that the aforesaid decree is held and will
be held by the United States to be absolutely null and void as against
the Government and citizens of the United States, and that any attempt
which shall be made to enforce the same against the Government or the
citizens of the United States will be disallowed.

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

[SEAL.]

Done at the city of Washington, the 17th day of August, A.D. 1866, and
of the Independence of the United States of America the ninety-first.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
_Secretary of State_.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas by proclamations of the 15th and 19th of April, 1861, the
President of the United States, in virtue of the power vested in him
by the Constitution and the laws, declared that the laws of the United
States were opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States
of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana,
and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary
course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals
by law; and

Whereas by another proclamation, made on the 16th day of August, in the
same year, in pursuance of an act of Congress approved July 13, 1861,
the inhabitants of the 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 Alleghany Mountains, and except also
the inhabitants of such other parts of that State and the other States
before named as might maintain a loyal adhesion to the Union and the
Constitution or might be from time to time occupied and controlled by
forces of the United States engaged in the dispersion of insurgents)
were declared to be in a state of insurrection against the United
States; and

Whereas by another proclamation, of the 1st day of July, 1862, issued in
pursuance of an act of Congress approved J