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Proclamation Forbidding Intercourse with Reble States1Jump to section
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation
Whereas, on the 15th. day of April, 1861, 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 & 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 Feb. 28th., 1759, 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 13, 1861, do hereby declare that the inhabitants of the said States of Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi & 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 & the other States hereinbefore named as may maintain a loyal adhesion to the Union and the Constitution, or may be from 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 thereof, with the exceptions aforesaid, and the citizens of other States and other parts of the United States is unlawful, and will remain unlawful until such insurrection shall cease or has been suppressed; that all goods and chattels, wares and merchandize, coming from any of said States, with the exceptions aforesaid