is a relapse into barbarism, and a crime against the civilization of the age.

The government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers, and if the enemy shall sell or enslave any one because of his color, the offense shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession. It is therefore ordered that for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed, and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on the public works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released, and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war. A. LINCOLN.

LETTER TO GENERAL BANKS, AUGUST 5, 1863. My Dear General Banks:-While I very well know what I would be glad for Louisiana to do, it is quite a different thing for me to assume direction of the matter. I would be glad for her to make a new Constitution, recognizing the Emancipation Proclamation, and adopting emancipation in those parts of the state to which the proclamation does not apply. And while she is at it, I think it would not be objectionable for her to adopt some practical system by which the two races could gradually live themselves out of their old relations to each other, and both come out better prepared for the new. Education for young blacks should be included in the plan. After all, the power of element of "contract" may be sufficient for this probationary period, and by its simplicity and

As an anti-slavery man, I

flexibility may be better. have a motive to desire emancipation which proslavery men do not have; but even they have strong enough reason to thus place themselves again under the shield of the Union, and to thus perpetually pledge against the recurrence of the scenes through which we are now passing. Governor Shepley has informed me that Mr. Durant is now taking a registry, with a view to the election of a constitutional convention in Louisiana. This, to me, appears proper. If such convention were to ask my views, I could present little else than what I now say to you. I think the thing should be pushed forward so that, if possible, its mature work may reach here by the meeting of Congress. For my own part, I think I shall not, in any event, retract the Emancipation Proclamation; nor, as Executive, ever return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress. If Louisiana shall send members to Congress, their admission to seats will depend, as you know, upon the respective houses, and not upon the President.

Yours, very truly,

A. LINCOLN.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY, HORATIO SEYMOUR, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK.

Executive Mansion, Washington, August 7, 1863. Your communication of the third instant has been received and attentively considered.

I can not consent to suspend the draft in New York, as you request, because, among other reasons, time is important. By the figures you send, which I presume

are correct, the twelve districts represented fall in two classes of eight and four respectively. The disparity of the quotas for the draft in these two classes is certainly very striking, being the difference between the average of 2,200 in one class, and 4,864 in the other.

Assuming that the districts are equal, one to another, an entire population, as required by the plan on which they were made, this disparity is such as to require attention. Much of it, however, I suppose will be accounted for by the fact that so many more persons fit for soldiers are in the city than are in the country, who have too recently arrived from other parts of the United States and from Europe to be either included in the census of 1860, or to have voted in 1862. Still, making due allowance for this, I am yet unwilling to stand upon it as an entirely sufficient explanation of the great disparity.

I shall direct the draft to proceed in all the districts, drawing, however, at first from each of the four districts, to wit: the second, fourth, sixth, and eighthonly 2,200 being the average quota of the other class. After the drawing, these four districts, and also the seventeenth and twenty-ninth, shall be carefully reenrolled; and, if you please, agents of yours may witness every step of the process.

Any deficiency which may appear by the new enrollment will be supplied by special draft for that object, allowing due credit for volunteers who may be obtained from these districts respectively during the interval; and at all points, so far as consistent with practical convenience, due credit shall be given

for volunteers, and your Excellency shall be notified of the time fixed for commencing a draft in each district. A. LINCOLN.

LETTER TO GENERAL GRANT, AUGUST 9, 1863.

General Thomas has gone again to the Mississippi valley, with the view of raising colored troops. I have no doubt that you are doing what you reasonably can upon the same subject. I believe it a resource which, if rigorously applied now, will soon close this contest. It works doubly, weakening the enemy and strengthening us. We were not fully ripe for it until the river was opened. Now, I think, at least one hundred thousand can, and ought to be, organized along its shores, relieving all the white troops to serve elsewhere.

Mr. Davis understands you as believing that the emancipation proclamation has helped some of your military operations, and I am very glad if this is so. A. LINCOLN.

LETTER TO THE ILLINOIS CONVENTION.

Executive Mansion, Washington, Aug. 26, 1863. Hon. James C. Conkling: My Dear Sir-Your letter inviting me to attend a mass meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at the capital of Illinois, on the 3d day of September, has been received. It would be very agreeable for me thus to meet my old friends at my own home, but I can not just now be absent from here as long as a visit there would require.

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain un

conditional devotion to the Union, and I am sure my old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's gratitude to those other noble men whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the nation's life.

There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I would say, you desire peace, and you blame me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it? There are but three conceivable ways: First, to suppress the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way, is to give up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it? If you are, you should say so plainly. If you are not for force, nor yet for dissolution, there only remains some imaginable compromise.

I do not believe that any compromise embracing the maintenance of the Union is now possible. All that I learn leads to a directly opposite belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military, its army. That army dominates all the country and all the people within its range. Any offer of terms made by any man or men within that range, in opposition to that army, is simply nothing for the present; because such man or men have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise, if one were made with them.

To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and peace men of the North get together in convention, and frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration of the Union. In what way can that compromise be used to keep Lee's army out of Penn