In Mississippi, in 1862, Col. James B. Steedman (afterward major-general) refused to honor an order of Gen. Fry, delivered by the man who wanted the slave in Steedman's camp. Col. Steedman read the order and told the bearer that he was a rebel; that he could not search _his_ camp; and that he would give him just ten minutes to get out of the camp, or he would riddle him with bullets. When Gen. Fry asked for an explanation of his refusal to allow his camp to be searched, Col. Steedman said he would never consent to have his camp searched by a _rebel_; that he would use every bayonet in his regiment to protect the Negro slave who had come to him for protection; and that he was sustained by the Articles of War, which had been amended about that time. Again, in the late summer of 1863, at Tuscumbia, Tennessee, Gen. Fry rode into Col. Steedman's camp to secure the return of the slaves of an old lady whom he had known before the war. Col. Steedman said he did not know that any slaves were in his camp; and that if they were there they should not be taken except they were willing to go. Gen. Fry was a Christian gentleman of a high Southern type, and combined with his loyalty to the Union an abiding faith in "the sacredness of slave property." Whether he ever recovered from the malady, history saith not. The great majority of regular army officers were in sympathy with the idea of protecting slave property. Gen. T. W. Sherman, occupying the defences of Port Royal, in October, 1861, issued the following proclamation to the people of South Carolina: "In obedience to the orders of the President of these United States of America, I have landed on your shores with a small force of National troops. The dictates of a duty which, under the Constitution, I owe to a great sovereign State, and to a proud and hospitable people, among whom I have passed some of the pleasantest days of my life, prompt me to proclaim that we have come among you with no feelings of personal animosity; no desire to harm your citizens, destroy your property, or interfere with any of your lawful rights, or your social and local institutions, beyond what the causes herein briefly alluded to may render unavoidable."[77] This proclamation sounds as if the general were a firm believer in State sovereignty; and that he was possessed with a feeling that he had landed in some strange land, among a people of different civilization and peculiar institutions. On the 13th of November, 1861, Major-Gen. John A. Dix, upon taking possession of the counties of Accomac and Northampton, Va., issued the following proclamation: