to confiscation; if not property, but _persons_ residing in the
insurrectionary region, we should invite them as well as the whites to
unite with us in putting down the Rebellion." This view was in the main
concurred in by the Cabinet members present, and greatly heartened the
President in his course. On the 22d of September, 1862, he issued what
is known as the "Preliminary Proclamation." The text of this momentous
document is as follows:

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim
and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be
prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the
constitutional relations between the United States and each of the
States and the people thereof, in which States that relation is or
may be suspended or disturbed.

That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, to again
recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary
aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so
called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the
United States, and which States may then have voluntarily adopted,
or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual
abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the
effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent,
upon this continent or elsewhere, with the previously obtained
consent of the governments existing there, will be continued.

That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves
within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be
then, thenceforward, and forever FREE; and the Executive government
of the United States, including the military and naval authority
thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons,
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