Lieut.  Col.  James B. Knox, Tenth Regiment Pennsylvania Reserves, offers his resignation under circumstances inducing me to wish to accept it.  But I prefer to know your pleasure upon the subject.  Please answer.

A. Lincoln.

TO JUDGE HOFFMAN.

Executive Mansion,
December 15, 1863.

Hon.  Ogden Hoffman, U. S. District Judge, San Francisco, Cal.: 

The oath in the proclamation of December 8 is intended for those who may voluntarily take it, and not for those who may be constrained to take it in order to escape actual imprisonment or punishment.  It is intended that the latter class shall abide the granting or withholding of the pardoning power in the ordinary way.

A. Lincoln.

Telegram to Mary GONYEAG. 
Executive Mansion, Washington, December 15, 1863.

Mother Mary GONYEAG, Superior, Academy of Visitation,
Keokuk, Iowa: 

The President has no authority as to whether you may raffle for the benevolent object you mention.  If there is no objection in the Iowa laws, there is none here.

A. Lincoln.

PROCLAMATION CONCERNING DISCRIMINATING DUTIES, DECEMBER 16, 1863.

By the president of the united states of America: 

A Proclamation.

Whereas by an act of the Congress of the United States of the 24th of May, 1828, entitled “An act in addition to an act entitled ’An act concerning discriminating duties of tonnage and impost’ and to equalize the duties on Prussian vessels and their cargoes,” it is provided that upon satisfactory evidence being given to the President of the United States by the government of any foreign nation that no discriminating duties of tonnage or impost are imposed or levied in the ports of the said nation upon vessels wholly belonging to citizens of the United States or upon the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported in the same from the United States or from any foreign country, the President is thereby authorized to issue his proclamation declaring that the foreign discriminating duties of tonnage and impost within the United States are and shall be suspended and discontinued so far as respects the vessels of the said foreign nation and the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported into the United States in the same from the said foreign nation or from any other foreign country, the said suspension to take effect from the time of such notification being given to the President of the United States and to continue so long as the reciprocal exemption of vessels belonging to citizens of the United States and their cargoes, as aforesaid, shall be continued, and no longer; and