Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 14.djvu/844

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Wnicnnas a war is existing in the Republic of Mexico, aggravated by foreign military intervention;

And whereas the United States, in accordance with their settled habits and policy, are a. neutral power in regard to the war which thus afilicts the Republic of Mexico·

And whizreas it has become known that one of the belligerents in the said war, namely, the Prince Maximilian, who asserts himself to be Emperor in Mexico, has issued a decree in regard to the port of Matamoras, and other Mexican ports which are in the occupation am possession of another of the said belligercnts, namely, the United States of Mexico, which decree is in the fol- —lowin¤· words:-

The port of Matamoras, and all those of the northern frontier which have withdrawn from their obedience to the government, are closed to foreign and coasting trafiic during such time as the empire of the law shall not be therein reinstated.

“ Anr. 2d. Merchandise proceeding from the said orts, on arriving at any other where the excise of the Empire is collected, shad pay the duties on importation, introduction, and consumption; and on satisfactory proof of contravention shall be irremissibly confiscated. Our Minister of the Treasury is char red with the punctual execution of this decree. “ Oivcn at Mexico, the 9th of July, 1866.”

And whereas the decree thus recited, by declaring a belligerent blockade unsupported by competent military or naval force, is in violation of the neutral rights of the United States, as defined by the law of nations, as well as of the treaties existing between the United States of America and the aforesaid United States of Mexico:

Decree of Now, therefore, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, do §°°l¤*·d° of d hereby proclaim and declare, that the aforesaid decree is held, and will be held, Otggmgzicgg by the United States to be absolutely null and void, as against the government ,,0,.,, d,,,,],,_,.,,d and citizens of the United States; and that any attempt which shall be made null and void. to enforce the same against the government or the citizens of the United States will be disallowed.

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

Done at the city of lVashington the seventeenth day of August, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and in the Independence of the United States of America the ninety-first. [SEAL.] By the President: , Secretary of State.

, by proclamations of the fifteenth and nineteenth of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, the President of the United States, in virtue of the power vested in him by the Constitution and the laws, declared that the laws of the United States were opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals of the law;