The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, desires and enjoins the orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers and men in the military and naval service.  The importance for man and beast of the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian soldiers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment of a Christian people, and a due regard for the divine will demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced to the measure of strict necessity.

The discipline and character of the national forces should not suffer nor the cause they defend be imperilled by the profanation of the day or name of the Most High.  “At this time of public distress,” adopting the words of Washington in 1776, “men may find enough to do in the service of God and their country without abandoning themselves to vice and immorality.”  The first general order issued by the Father of his Country after the Declaration of Independence indicates the spirit in which our institutions were founded and should ever be defended: 

“The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.”

Abraham Lincoln.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL BLAIR

Executive Mansion, Washington, November 17,1862.

Hon.  F. P. Blair: 

Your brother says you are solicitous to be ordered to join General McLernand.  I suppose you are ordered to Helena; this means that you are to form part of McLernand’s expedition as it moves down the river; and General McLernand is so informed.  I will see General Halleck as to whether the additional force you mention can go with you.

A. Lincoln.

TELEGRAM TO GENERAL J. A. DIX.

Washington, D. C., November 18, 1861.

Major-general Dix, Fort Monroe: 

Please give me your best opinion as to the number of the enemy now at
Richmond and also at Petersburg.

A. Lincoln.

TO GOVERNOR SHEPLEY.

Executive Mansion, Washington,
November 21, 1862.

Hon.  G. F. Shepley.

Dear sir:—­Dr. Kennedy, bearer of this, has some apprehension that Federal officers not citizens of Louisiana may be set up as candidates for Congress in that State.  In my view there could be no possible object in such an election.  We do not particularly need members of Congress from there to enable us to get along with legislation here.  What we do want is the conclusive evidence that respectable citizens of Louisiana are willing to be members of Congress and to swear support to the Constitution, and that other respectable citizens there are willing to vote for them and send them.  To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives, elected, as would be understood (and perhaps really so), at the point of the bayonet, would be disgusting and outrageous; and were I a member of Congress here, I would vote against admitting any such man to a seat.