Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That whenever the President of the United States shall be satisfied that any State shall have lawfully abolished slavery within and throughout such State, either immediately or gradually, it shall be the duty of the President, assisted by the Secretary of the Treasury, to prepare and deliver to such State an amount of 6 per cent interest-bearing bonds of the United States equal to the aggregate value at $——­ per head of all the slaves within such State as reported by the census of the year 1860; the whole amount for any one State to be delivered at once if the abolishment be immediate, or in equal annual installments if it be gradual, interest to begin running on each bond at the time of its delivery, and not before.

And be it further enacted, That if any State, having so received any such bonds, shall at any time afterwards by law reintroduce or tolerate slavery within its limits contrary to the act of abolishment upon which such bonds shall have been received, said bonds so received by said State shall at once be null and void, in whosesoever hands they may be, and such State shall refund to the United States all interest which may have been paid on such bonds.

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

Washington, July 15, 1862.

Hon. SOLOMON FOOT,
  President pro tempore of the Senate.

SIR:  Please inform the Senate that I shall be obliged if they will postpone the adjournment at least one day beyond the time which I understand to be now fixed for it.

Your obedient servant,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

[The same message was addressed to Hon. Calusha A. Crow, Speaker of the House of Representatives.]

JULY 17, 1862.

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives: 

Considering the bill for “An act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and for other purposes,” and the joint resolution explanatory of said act as being substantially one, I have approved and signed both.

Before I was informed of the passage of the resolution I had prepared the draft of a message stating objections to the bill becoming a law, a copy of which draft is herewith transmitted.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

  Fellow-Citizens of the House of Representatives: 

I herewith return to your honorable body, in which it originated, the bill for an act entitled “An act to suppress treason and rebellion, to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, and for other purposes,” together with my objections to its becoming a law.

There is much in the bill to which I perceive