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

Whereas satisfactory evidence has lately been received by me through an official communication of Senor Don Luis Molina, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Nicaragua, under date of the 28th of November, 1863, that no other or higher duties of tonnage and impost have been imposed or levied since the second day of August, 1838, in the ports of Nicaragua, upon vessels wholly belonging to citizens of the United States, and upon the produce, manufactures, or merchandise imported in the same from the United States, and from any foreign country whatever, than are levied on Nicaraguan ships and their cargoes in the same ports under like circumstances: 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, do hereby declare and proclaim that so much of the several acts imposing discriminating duties of tonnage and impost within the United States are, and shall be, suspended and discontinued so far as respects the vessels of Nicaragua, and the produce, manufactures, and the merchandise imported into the United States in the same from the dominions of Nicaragua, and from any other foreign country whatever; the said suspension to take effect from the day above mentioned, and to continue thenceforward so long as the reciprocal exemption of the vessels of the United States, and the produce, manufactures, and merchandise imported into the dominions of Nicaragua in the same, as aforesaid, shall be continued on the part of the government of Nicaragua.

Given under my hand at the city of Washington, the sixteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and the eighty-eighth of the Independence of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln.

By the President: 
William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

MESSAGE TO CONGRESS,

December 17, 1863.

To the Senate and house of representatives of the united states: 

Herewith I lay before you a letter addressed to myself by a committee of gentlemen representing the freedmen’s aid societies in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati.  The subject of the letter, as indicated above, is one of great magnitude and importance, and one which these gentlemen, of known ability and high character, seem to have considered with great attention and care.  Not having the time to form a mature judgment of my own as to whether the plan they suggest is the best, I submit the whole subject to Congress, deeming that their attention thereto is almost imperatively demanded.