Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, cordially concurring with the Congress of the United States in the penitential and pious sentiments expressed in the aforesaid resolution, and heartily approving of the devotional design and purpose thereof, do hereby appoint the first Thursday of August next to be observed by the people of the United States as a day of national humiliation and prayer.

I do hereby further invite and request the heads of the Executive Departments of this Government, together with all lerates, and all other persons exercising authority in the land, whether civil, military, or naval, and all soldiers, seamen, and marines in the national service, and all the other loyal and law-abiding people of the United States, to assemble in their preferred places of public worship on that day, and there and then to render to the Almighty and Merciful Ruler of the universe such homages and such confessions, and to offer to Him such supplications as the Congress of the United States have in their aforesaid resolution so solemnly, so earnestly, and so reverently recommended.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this seventh day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

[L. S.]

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

By PRESIDENT:

WILLIAM H. SEWARD,

Secretary of State.

WAR DEPT., PROVOST-MARSHAL-GENERAL'S OFFICE,

Washington, D. C., July 7, 1864.

His Excellency JOHN A. ANDREW,

Governor of Massachusetts, Boston, Mass.:

SIR: Section 8 of the act approved July 4, 1864, further to regulate and provide for the enrolling and calling out the national forces, and for other purposes, is as follows:

That all persons in the naval service of the United States who have entered said service during the present rebellion, who have not been credited to the quota of any town, district, ward, or State, by reason of their being in said service and not enrolled prior to February 24, 1864, shall be enrolled and credited to the quotas of the town, ward, district, or State in which they respectively reside upon satisfactory proof of their residence made to the Secretary of War.

The Secretary of War hereby appoint Your Excellency and Honorable John H. Clifford a commission to ascertain what credits the State of Massachusetts and the different subdivisions of the State are entitled to under the law given above. In determining this question the Secretary thinks it will be fair to presume that the State in which naval enlistments have been made is entitled to the credit for those enlistments, unless it shall appear by more direct evidence that the credits belong elsewhere. The points of law to be observed in applying the act quoted will readily be perceived by the Commission.

Major F. N. Clarke, acting assistant provost-marshal-general for Massachusetts, will represent the United States so far as to carry into