FREEDOM OF THE PEESS. 



FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH. 425 



LEXINGTON, Ky., June, 4M, 

 Editor of tlie New Tori; World: 



Having been directed by the President of the United 

 States to revoke that part of my order, suppressing 

 the " Chicago Times," I have revoked the entire or- 

 der, and your paper will be allowed its circulation in 

 this department. A. E. BURNSIDE. 



Previously, on the 2d of June, General Burn- 

 side issued the following order : 



General Order, No. 87. 



HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT or TEE OHIO, ( 

 CINCINNATI, OHIO, June 2rf, 18C3. j 



It is announced, for the information of all concerned, 

 that the publication or circulation of books containing 

 sentiments of a disloyal tendency comes clearly within 

 the reach of General Order No. 38, and those who of- 

 fend will be dealt with accordingly. 

 By command of Major-General BURNSIDE. 

 [Signed] LEWIS RICHMOND, 



Assistant Adjutant-General. 



W. P. ANDERSON, 

 Assistant Adjutant-General. 



For the order, No. 88, thus alluded to, see 

 HABEAS CORPUS. 



On the 8th of June a meeting of editors was 

 held in New York, at which the following 

 newspapers were represented : 



1. New York Leader John Clancy. 



2. Express Jas. Brooks. 



3. Atlas Anson Herrick. 



4. Independent. ... Theodore Tilton. 



5. Journal of Commerce.. .Wm. C. Prime. 



6. Tribune Horace Greeley. 



7. Staats Zeitung Mr. Ottendorfer. 



8. Sun J. Beach. 



10. 



11. 

 12. 

 13. 

 14. 

 15. 



Horace Greeley was called to the chair, and 

 offered a series of resolutions which were re- 

 ferred to a committee who reported the resolu- 

 tions of Mr. Greeley, somewhat amended, as 

 follows : 



Whereas the liberty and rights of the press as af- 

 fected by the existence and necessities 01 a state of 

 war, and especially of civil war, are topics of the high- 

 est public concern, and 



Whereas recent events indicate the existence of 

 grave misapprehensions and lamentable confusion of 

 ideas with regard to this vital question ; therefore, 



Resolved, That our conception of the rights and du- 

 ties of the press in a season of convulsion and public 

 peril like the present, are briefly summed up in the 

 following propositions : 



1. We recognize and affirm the duty of fidelity to 

 the Constitution, Government, and Laws of our coun- 

 try, as a high moral as well as political obligation rest- 

 ing on every citizen, and neither claim for ourselves 

 nor concede to others any exemption from its require- 

 ments or privilege to evade their sacred and binding 

 force. 



2. That treason and rebellion are crimes, by the 

 fundamental law of this as of every other country ; and 

 nowhere else so culpable, so abhorrent, as in a repub- 

 lic, where each man has an equal voice and vote in the 

 peaceful and legal direction of public affairs. 



3. While we thus emphatically disclaim and deny 

 any right as inhering in journalists or others to incite, 

 advocate, abet, uphold, or justify treason or rebellion, 

 we respectfully but firmly assert and maintain the 

 right of the press to criticize firmly and fearlessly the 



Sunday Mercury 



Argus Elon Comstock. 



Jewish Messenger M. S. Isaacs. 



Irish American P. J. Meehan. 



Scientific American .. .R. McFarlane. 

 New Yorker. C. Mathews. 



acts of those charged with the administration of the 

 Government, also those of all their civil and military 

 subordinates, whether with intent directly to secure 

 greater energy, efficiency, and fidelity to the public 

 service, or in order to achieve the same ends more re- 

 motely through the substitution of other persons for 

 those in power. 



4. That any limitations of this right, created by the 

 necessities of war, should be confined to localities 

 wherein hostilities actually exist or are immediately 

 threatened, and we deny the right of any military of- 

 ficer to suppress the issues or forbid the general circu- 

 lation of journals printed hundreds of miles from the 

 seat of war. 



The resolutions were unanimously adopted. 



The effect of this emphatic declaration of sen- 

 timents was soon felt. No more papers were 

 suppressed, and several which had been were 

 again allowed circulation through the mails. 



In the Middle Department, commanded by 

 Gen. Schenck, the press was forbidden to make 

 extracts from certain New York papers, as ap- 

 pears by the following from the provost-mar- 

 shal' at Baltimore : 



HEADQUARTERS MIDDLE DEP'T, STH AKMT CORPS, ) 

 OFFICE PROVOST-MARSHAL, 



BALTIMORE, June 21*<, 1863. ) 



An order was published in the evening edition of 

 the " Republican, also in the "Sunday Telegram," 

 of to-day, purporting to emanate from this office, in 

 reference to the suppression of certain newspapers. 

 No such order as thus published was issued. It is 

 perhaps a misunderstanding, which is thus explained. 

 I was directed by the major-general commanding, to 

 notify the editors of some of the city papers, " that no 

 extracts from the ' New York World, ' New York Ex- 

 press,' ' Caucasian,' ' Cincinnati Inquirer,' and ' Chi- 

 cago Times,' would be permitted to be published in 

 this department," which was duly done, and from this 

 fact the mistake must have occurred. I therefore re- 

 spectfully request that this explanation be published. 



WILLIAM S. FISH, 

 Lieutenant-Colonel and Provost-Marshal. 



FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH. In the AN- 

 NTTAL CYCLOPAEDIA for 1861 and 1862 under 

 the title SLAVES, there has been traced the 

 progress which had been made, up to January, 

 1863, in solving the vexed question of what 

 should be done with the Africans or persons of 

 African descent, who had been the slaves of 

 rebel masters, and had either escaped from, or 

 been abandoned by, those who had formerly 

 held them in slavery. The President's Eman- 

 cipation Proclamation gave a new and greatly 

 increased importance to this problem. That 

 proclamation, as soon as it was promulgated, 

 gave an impulse to the influx of the negroes 

 into the Union lines, often in a state of utter des- 

 titution both of food and clothing, and that in- 

 flux appeared to be destined to increase as the 

 proclamation was more and more widely dissem- 

 inated, until it might result in the coming in of 

 by far the greater part of the bondmen of the 

 insurrectionary States. "Without some mode 

 of employment for them, some means of ena- 

 bling them to earn their subsistence, the army 

 would soon be swamped, or these helpless 

 creatures must perish by cold and starvation. 

 In a time of peace there would have been no 

 difficulty, since there would have been a de- 

 mand for the labor of all who were able to 



