Whereas there appears in the public prints what purports to be a proclamation of Major-General Hunter, in the words and figures following, to wit: HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE SOUTH, _Hilton Head, S.C., May 9, 1862_. _General Orders, No. 11_.--The three States of Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, comprising the Military Department of the South, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States--Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina--heretofore held as slaves are therefore declared forever free. DAVID HUNTER, _Major-General Commanding_. Official: ED. W. SMITH, _Acting Assistant Adjutant-General_. And whereas the same is producing some excitement and misunderstanding: Therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, proclaim and declare that the Government of the United States had no knowledge, information, or belief of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation, nor has it yet any authentic information that the document is genuine; and, further, that neither General Hunter nor any other commander or person has been authorized by the Government of the United States to make proclamations declaring the slaves of any State free, and that the supposed proclamation now in question, whether genuine or false, is altogether void so far as respects such declaration. I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any State or States free, and whether at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the Government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These are totally different questions from those of police regulations in armies and camps. On the 6th day of March last, by a special message, I recommended to Congress the adoption of a joint resolution to be substantially as follows: _Resolved_, That the United States ought to cooperate with any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.