Selected Correspondance of Abraham Lincoln 1863 Letter To Secretary Welles
by Abraham Lincoln
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
January 4, 1863.
HON. GIDEON WELLES, Secretary of the Navy.
DEAR SIR:--As many persons who come well recommended for loyalty and
service to the Union cause, and who are refugees from rebel
oppression in the State of Virginia, make application to me for
authority and permission to remove their families and property to
protection within the Union lines, by means of our armed gunboats on
the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, you are hereby requested to
hear and consider all such applications, and to grant such assistance
to this class of persons as in your judgment their merits may render
proper, and as may in each case be consistent with the perfect and
complete efficiency of the naval service and with military
expediency.
