Excerpt from Message of the President of the United States: Communicating, in Compliance With a Resolution of the Senate of the 12th Instant, Information in Relation to the States of the Union Lately in Rebellion Meridian, Jackson, and Vicksburg; then descended the Mississippi to New Orleans, touching at Natchez; from New Orleans I visited Mobile, Alabama, and the Teche country, in Louisiana, and then spent again some days at Natchez and Vicksburg, on my way to the north. These are the outlines of my journey. Before laying the results of my Observations before you, it is proper that I should state the modes operandi by which I obtained information and formed my conclusions. Wherever I went I sought interviews with persons who might be presumed to represent the opinions, or to have influence upon the conduct, Of their neighbors; I had thus frequent meetings with individuals be longing to the different classes of society from the highest to the lowest; in the cities as well as on the roads and steamboats I had many Opportunities to con verse not only with inhabitants of the adjacent country, but with persons com ing from districts which I was not able to visit; and finally I compared the impressions thus received with the experience of the military and civil officers of the government stationed in that country, as well as of other reliable Union men to whom a longer residence on the spot and a more varied intercourse with the people had given better facilities of local observation than my circum stances permitted me to enjoy. When practicable I procured statements of their views and experience in writing as well as copies of official or private reports they had received from their subordinates or other persons. It was not expected Of me that I should take formal testimony, and, indeed, such an ope ration would have required more time than I was able to devote to it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.