the adoption of that constitution shall be submitted to the citizens of the State; and if this should seem desirable, I would recommend that a separate vote be taken upon such parts as may be thought expedient, and that at the same time and under the same authority there shall be an election for the officers provided under such constitution, and that the constitution, or such parts thereof as shall have been adopted by the people, be submitted to Congress on the first Monday of December next for its consideration, so that if the same is then approved the necessary steps will have been taken for the restoration of the State of Virginia to its proper relations to the Union.  I am led to make this recommendation from the confident hope and belief that the people of that State are now ready to cooperate with the National Government in bringing it again into such relations to the Union as it ought as soon as possible to establish and maintain, and to give to all its people those equal rights under the law which were asserted in the Declaration of Independence in the words of one of the most illustrious of its sons.

I desire also to ask the consideration of Congress to the question whether there is not just ground for believing that the constitution framed by a convention of the people of Mississippi for that State, and once rejected, might not be again submitted to the people of that State in like manner, and with the probability of the same result.

U.S.  GRANT.

PROCLAMATION.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas objects of interest to the United States require that the Senate should be convened at 12 o’clock on the 12th day of April, 1869, to receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it on the part of the Executive: 

Now, therefore, I, U.S.  Grant, President of the United States, have considered it to be my duty to issue this my proclamation, declaring that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States to convene for the transaction of business at the Capitol, in the city of Washington, on the 12th day of April, 1869, at 12 o’clock noon on that day, of which all who shall at that time be entitled to act as members of that body are hereby required to take notice.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington, the 8th day of April, A.D. 1869, and of the Independence of the United States of America the ninety-third.

[SEAL.]

U.S.  GRANT.

By the President: 
  HAMILTON FISH,
    Secretary of State.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, April 16, 1869.

To the Senate of the United States: 

I transmit to the Senate, for consideration with a view to ratification, a convention between the United States and the Emperor of the French, signed this day by the plenipotentiaries of the parties, for the mutual protection of trade-marks of their respective citizens and subjects.