urging a united endeavor to save the nation by removing the only cause of its deadly danger:

There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary, upon which to divide. . . . The fact of separation, if it comes, gives up, on the part of the seceding section, the fugitive slave cause, along with all other constitutional obligations upon the section seceded from, while I should expect no treaty stipulation would ever be made to take its place.

But there is another difficulty. The great interior region, bounded east by the Alleghanies, north by the British Dominions, west by the Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and cotton meets, already has above ten millions of people, and will have fifty millions within fifty years, if not prevented by any political folly or mistake. . . A glance at the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of the Republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it, the magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, being the deepest, and also the richest in undeveloped resources. In the production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all which proceeds from them, this great interior region is naturally one of the most important in the world.

And yet this region has no sea-coast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. But separate our common country into two nations, as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets, not, perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade regulations.

Among the friends of the Union, there is great diversity of sentiment, and of policy, in regard to slavery, and the African race among us. Some would perpetuate slavery; some would abolish it suddenly, and without compensation; some would abolish it gradually, and with compensation; some would remove the freed people from us, and some would retain them with us; and there are yet other minor

diversities. Because of these diversities, we waste much strength in struggles among ourselves. By mutual concession we should harmonize, and act together. This would be compromise; but it would be compromise among the friends, and not with the enemies of the Union. These articles are intended to embody a plan of such mutual concessions. If the plan shall be adopted, it is assumed that emancipation will follow, at least in several of the States.

As to the first article, the main points are: First, emancipation; secondly, the length of time for consummating it - thirty-seven years; and, thirdly, the compensation.

The emancipation will be unsatisfactory to the advocates of perpetual slavery; but the length of time should greatly mitigate their dissatisfaction. The time spares both races from the evils of sudden derangement - in fact, from the necessity of any derangement-while most of those whose habitual course of thought will be disturbed by the measure, will have passed away before its consummation. They will never see it. Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will deprecate the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to the now living slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are very great; and it gives the inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever. Doubtless, some of those who are to pay, and not to receive, will object. Yet the measure is both just and economical. In a certain sense, the liberation of slaves is the destruction of property,― property acquired by descent, or by purchase, the same as any other property. . . If, then, for a common object, this property is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a common charge? And if, with less money, or money more easily paid, we can preserve the benefits of the Union by this means, than we can by war alone, is it not also economical to do it? . . . The war requires large sums and requires them at once. The aggregate sum necessary for compensated emancipation, of course, would be large. But it would require no ready cash; nor the bonds even, any faster than the emancipation progresses. This might not, and probably would not, close before the end of the thirty

seven years. At that time we shall probably have a hundred millions of people to share the burden, instead of thirtyone millions, as now. . . . At the same ratio of increase which we have maintained, on an average, from our first national census, in 1790, until that of 1860, we should, in 1900, have a population of 103,208,415. And why may we not continue that ratio far beyond that period? Our abundant room our broad national homestead - is our ample

resource.

I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization. And yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country, which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious. It is insisted that their presence would injure, and displace white labor and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that colored people can displace any more white labor by being free than by remaining slaves? If they stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers; if they leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. Logically, there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and, very surely, would not reduce them.

This plan is recommended as a means, not in exclusion of, but in addition to, all others for restoring and preserving the national authority throughout the Union. The subject is presented exclusively in its economical aspect. The plan would, I am confident, secure peace more speedily, and maintain it more permanently, than can be done by force alone; while all it would cost, considering amounts, and manner of payment, and times of payment, would be easier paid than will be the additional cost of the war, if we rely solely upon force. It is muchvery much that it would cost no blood at all.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case

is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this Administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we know how to save it. We - even we here - hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free-honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.

This appeal, for the moment, brought no new support to the Administration. Emancipation in any form was wormwood and gall to men of the Border States in general, and the proposal of compensation for slaves, to be followed by their colonization, was hardly less repugnant to the most earnest emancipationists. Opposition members in both branches of Congress had become bolder and more outspoken since the late elections. On the Republican side there were serious discontents, with a growing inclination to criticise the Executive management. As to the conduct of the war, this state of feeling was aggravated by military events which had their disastrous culmination, soon after the session began, under the new commander of the Army of the Potomac.

vol. ii.-10

CHAPTER XII.

1862-1863.

Third Stage of the War - Stone River - On the Mississippi and the Gulf.

The second period of the war may be reckoned as closing with the battles at Antietam, Perryville, Corinth, and Prairie Grove, which arrested the aggressive Northern movements of the Confederates after their repulse of McClellan at Richmond. About the same time — helping to give character to a third period were the initiation of an Emancipation policy and a change of military commanders.

A few days before McClellan was relieved of his command a like event happened to General Buell. He was ordered (October 28th) to give place to General Rosecrans, who found the army at Bowling Green. It required weeks to complete the restoration of the railway. Bragg had meantime not only returned through East Tennessee to Chattanooga, but had advanced from thence directly toward Nashville, where Rosecrans was at Christmas. Bragg was thirty miles distant, at Murfreesboro, when a southward movement of the Union army began on the 26th of December. McCook reached Wilkinson's Cross Roads, within six miles of Murfreesboro, on the 29th. Crittenden, by the Nash