GENERAL ORDERS,)

No. 141 )

WAR DEPT. ADJT. GENERAL'S OFFICE

Washington, September 25, 1862

The following proclamation by the President is published for the information and government of the Army and all concerned.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

A PROCLAMATION

Whereas it has become necessary to call into the service not only volunteers but also portions of the militia of the States by draft, in order to suppress the insurrection existing in the United States, and disloyal persons are not adequately restrained by the ordinary process of the law from hindering this measure and from giving aid and comfort in various ways to the insurrection:

Now, therefore, be it ordered--

First. That during the existing insurrection, and as a necessary measure for suppressing the same, all rebels and insurgents, their agents and abettors, within the United States, and all persons discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting the militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to rebels against the authority of the United States, shall be subject to martial law, and liable to trial and punishment by courts-martial or military commission.

Second. That the writ of habeas corpus is suspended in respect to all persons arrested, or who are now, or hereafter during the rebellion shall be imprisoned in any fort, camp, arsenal, military prison, or other place of confinement by any military authority, or by sentence of any court-martial or military commission.

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

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

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

By the President

WILLIAM H. SEAWARD

Secretary of State

By Order of the secretary of War:

L. Thomas

Adjutant-General

[War of The Rebellion: A Compilation of Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 3, Volume 2, pages 587 - 588, Government Printing Office, 1882]