Proclamation of General Dix to the people of Accomac and Northampton counties.
The military forces of the United States are about to enter your counties as a part of the union. They will go among you as friends, and with the earnest hope that they may not, see your acts be forced to become your enemies. They will invade no rights of person or property. On the contrary, your laws, your constitutions, your usages, will be scrupulously respected. There need be no fear that the quietude of any firesides will be disturbed unless the disturbance is caused by yourselves.Special directions have been given not to interfere with the condition of any persons held to domestic service, and, in order that there may be no ground for mistake or pretext for misrepresentations commanders of regiments and corps have been instructed not to permit any such persons to come within their lines. The command of the expedition is entrusted to Brigadier-General H. Lockwood, of Delaware, a State in some of the distinctive features and is social organization with your own portions of his force come from counties in Maryland bordering on one of yours. From him and from them you may be assured of sympathy of near neighbors, as well as friends, if you do not repel it by hostile retreat or attack. Their mission is to assert the authority of the United States; to redeem your intercourse with the loyal States, and especially with Maryland, which has just proclaimed her devotion to the Union by the most triumphant vote in her political journals to restore to commerce its accustomed guides, by establishing the lights on your to afford a free export for the products of your labor and a free ingress for the necessaries and comforts of life which you require in exchange; and, in a word, to put an end to the embarrassments and restrictions brought upon you by a causeless and unjustifiable rebellion.
If the calamities of intestine war, which be desolating other districts of Virginia, and have already crimsoned her fields with fraternal blood, fall also upon you, it will not be the fault of the Government. It asks ly that its authority may be recognized.-- ends among you a force too strong to be successfully opposed; a force which cannot be resisted in any other spirit than that of wantonness and malignity. If there are among you those who, rejecting all overtures of friendship, thus provoke retaliation, and drew down upon themselves consequences which the Government is most anxious to to their account must be laid the blood which may be shed, and the desolation which may be brought on peaceful homes. On all who are thus reckless of the obligations of humanity and duty, and on all who are found with arms, the severest punishment warranted by the laws of war will be visited.
To those who remain in the quiet pursuit of their domestic occupations, the public authorities assure all they can give — peace, freedom from annoyance, protection from foreign and internal enemies, a guaranty of the constitutional and legal rights, and the blessings of a just and parental Government.
Major-Genera Commanding.
Headquarters, Baltimore, Nov. 13, 1861.
