of the United States, shall be deemed
captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and
not again held as slaves.

SEC. 10. _And be it further enacted_, That no slave, escaping into
any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other
State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of
his liberty, except for crime, or some offense against the laws,
unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that
the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged
to be due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the
United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid
and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval
service of the United States shall, under any pretense whatever,
assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the
service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such
person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the
service.

And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the
military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey,
and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act
and sections above recited.

And the Executive will in due time recommend that all the citizens
of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto
throughout the rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the
constitutional relation between the United States and their
respective States and people, if that relation shall have been
suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of
the United States, including the loss of slaves.

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

Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-second day of
September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the
eighty-seventh.

_By the President_: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD, _Secretary of State_.

Lincoln's own account of this proclamation, and of the steps that led
to it, is given as reported by Mr. F.B. Carpenter. "It had," said
Lincoln, "got to be midsummer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to
worse, until I felt that we had reached