thought expedient, and
that at the same time and under the same authority there shall be an
election for the officers provided under such constitution, and that
the constitution, or such parts thereof as shall have been adopted by
the people, be submitted to Congress on the first Monday of December
next for its consideration, so that if the same is then approved the
necessary steps will have been taken for the restoration of the State
of Virginia to its proper relations to the Union. I am led to make this
recommendation from the confident hope and belief that the people of
that State are now ready to cooperate with the National Government in
bringing it again into such relations to the Union as it ought as soon
as possible to establish and maintain, and to give to all its people
those equal rights under the law which were asserted in the Declaration
of Independence in the words of one of the most illustrious of its sons.

I desire also to ask the consideration of Congress to the question
whether there is not just ground for believing that the constitution
framed by a convention of the people of Mississippi for that State, and
once rejected, might not be again submitted to the people of that State
in like manner, and with the probability of the same result.

U.S. GRANT.

PROCLAMATION.

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

A PROCLAMATION.

Whereas objects of interest to the United States require that the Senate
should be convened at 12 o'clock on the 12th day of April, 1869, to
receive and act upon such communications as may be made to it on the
part of the Executive:

Now, therefore, I, U.S. Grant, President of the United States, have
considered it to be my duty to issue this my proclamation, declaring
that an extraordinary occasion requires the Senate of the United States
to convene for the transaction of business at the Capitol, in the city
of Washington, on the 12th day of April, 1869, at 12 o'clock noon on
that day, of which all who shall at that time be entitled to act as
members of that body are hereby required to take notice.

Given under my hand and the seal of the United States, at Washington,
the 8th day of April, A.D. 1869, and of the Independence of the United
States of America the ninety-third.

[SEAL.]

U.S. GRANT.

By the President:
HAMILTON FISH,
_Secretary of State_.

SPECIAL MESSAGES.

WASHINGTON, _April 16, 1869_.

_To the Senate of the United St