You are engaged in suppressing an insurrection against the laws of the United States. If at any point on or in the vicinity of any military line which is now or which shall be used between the city of New York and the city of Washington you find resistance which renders it necessary to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_ for the public safety, you personally, or through the officer in command at the point where resistance occurs, are authorized to suspend that writ. [SEAL.] Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at the city of Washington, this 2d day of July, A.D. 1861, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-fifth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By the President: H. SEWARD, _Secretary of State_. SPECIAL SESSION MESSAGE. JULY 4, 1861. _Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives_: Having been convened on an extraordinary occasion, as authorized by the Constitution, your attention is not called to any ordinary subject of legislation. At the beginning of the present Presidential term, four months ago, the functions of the Federal Government were found to be generally suspended within the several States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, excepting only those of the Post-Office Department. Within these States all the forts, arsenals, dockyards, custom-houses, and the like, including the movable and stationary property in and about them, had been seized and were held in open hostility to this Government, excepting only Forts Pickens, Taylor, and Jefferson, on and near the Florida coast, and Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The forts thus seized had been put in improved condition, new ones had been built, and armed forces had been organized and were organizing, all avowedly with the same hostile purpose.