emancipation to be the logical result of persistence in rebellion. As the rebellion progressed, and the rebels themselves had forfeited all right to constitutional protection for their peculiar institution, he felt himself still withheld from meddling with slavery by any sweeping measure, for, in the four border states--Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri-which had not seceded, the government had many friends, whose hands he felt it his duty to strengthen by every possible means. He saw the time of emancipation coming, but he wished to save them; and this was the principal reason for his delay. How faithfully he endeavored to do this, and with how little avail, will appear in the narrative. Amid the attacks of bitter political foes, and the reproaches of well-meaning but impatient friends, he had a difficult path to pursue.

Following Mr. Lincoln's lead, Mr. Seward had announced to foreign governments that no change in the institutions of the South was contemplated. General McClellan had abundant reason in the President's position for assuring the people of Virginia, as he did, that he contemplated nothing of the kind. But the people were becoming discontented with this mild policy, and Congress obeyed their voice by an carly tabling of the Crittenden resolution, which had satisfied that body at their session in July.

Mr. Lincoln was quick to see the tendency of the public mind, and began at once to shape his measures for the result which could not long be delayed. On the sixth of March, he sent a message to Congress, recommending the passage a joint resolution which should be substantially as follows:

of

"Resolved: That the United States ought to co-operate with any state which may gradually adopt abolishment of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used by such state in its discretion, to compensate for inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system."

"If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the approval of Congress and the country," added Mr. Lincoln, "there is an enl; but if it does command such approval, I deem it of importance that the states and people

immediately interested should be at once distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to accept or reject it." It was Mr. Lincoln's opinion that one of the severest blows the rebellion could receive would be the abolition of slavery in the border states. To deprive the rebels of the hope of securing the still loyal slave states, he believed would be substantially to end the rebellion. If these states should abolish slavery, it would in effect be saying to the confederacy, "We will join you under no circumstances." He believed that gradual was better than sudden emancipation; and that, as a war measure, the government would make the scheme of compensation a paying one. Still true to his old tenderness on the subject of national interference with slavery, he took pains to show that his plan threw the whole matter into the hands of the states themselves.

There was kindly warning to his friends in the border slave states, in these words:

"In the annual message of last December, I thought fit to say-'The Union must be preserved; and hence all indispensable means must be employed. I said this not hastily, but deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable means to this end. Α practical re-acknowledgment of the national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. If, however, resistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend, and all the ruin which may follow it. Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency toward ending the struggle, must and will come. The proposition now made (though an offer only), I hope it may be esteemed no offense to ask whether the pecuniary consideration tendered would not be of more value to the states and private persons concerned, than are the institutions and property in it, in the present aspect of affairs.

"While it is true that the adoption of the proposed resolution would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead to important practical results. In full view of my great responsibility to God and my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the people to the subject."

It took no special degree of sagacity to learn what this passage meant; but those for whom this thoughtful measure was intended, though the resolution went through both

Houses of Congress, and stood as a pledge of compensation for emancipation, turned their backs upon it. Only a very few members from the border states voted for it. But the President could not let the matter stop there. He saw that emancipation would surely come as a war measure; and that these slave states that had stood by him through much difficulty, would lose, in that event, that which the Constitution recognized as their property.

Before the close of the session, he invited the senators and representatives from those states to a conference, at the Executive Mansion. It was early in July; and, while Congress had been talking and acting, McClellan had been fighting with very unsatisfactory results. The nation was depressed by reverses; and Mr. Lincoln wished to give these men and the people they represented another chance to escape from the loss which he felt must soon befall them. Having convened them, he read to them this carefully prepared address, in which he argued his own case and theirs, and appealed to them to save themselves and the country:

"Gentlemen-After the adjournment of Congress, now near, I shall have no opportunity of seeing you for several months. Believing that you of the border states hold more power for good than any other equal number of members, I feel it a duty which I cannot justifiably waive, to make this appeal to you.

"I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended. And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent and swift means of ending it. Let the states which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no event will the states you represent ever join their proposed confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest. But you cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them, as long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within your own states. Beat them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more forever.

"Most of you have treated me with kindness and consideration; and I trust you will not now think I improperly touch what is exclusively

your own, when, for the sake of the whole country, I ask, can you, for your states, do better than to take the course I urge? Discarding punctilio and maxims adapted to more manageable times, and looking. only to the unprecedentedly stern facts of our case, can you do better in any possible event? You prefer that the constitutional relation of the states to the nation shall be practically restored without disturbance of the institution: and if this were done, my whole duty, in this respect, under the Constitution and my oath of office, would be performed. But it is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war. The incidents of the war cannot be avoided. If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion-by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. How much better for you and for your people, to take the step which at once shortens the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event! How much better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the war! How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it! How much better for you, as seller, and the nation, as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war never could have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's throats!

"I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually. Room in South America for colonization can be obtained cheaply, and in abundance; and, when numbers shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go.

"I am pressed with a difficulty not yet mentioned-one which threatens division among those who, united, are none too strong. An instance of it is known to you. General Hunter is an honest man. He was, and I hope still is, my friend. I valued him none the less for his agreeing with me in the general wish that all men everywhere could be free. Ile proclaimed all men free within certain states, and I repudiated the proclamation. He expected more good and less harm from the measure than I could believe would follow. Yet, in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offense, to many whose support the country cannot afford to lose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon me, and is increasing. By conceding what I now ask, you can relieve me, and, much more, can relieve the country in this important point.

"Upon these considerations I have again begged your attention to the message of March last. Before leaving the capital, consider and discuss it among yourselves. You are patriots and statesmen, and as

such I pray you consider this proposition; and at the least commend it to the consideration of your states and people. As you would perpetuațe popular government for the best people in the world, I beseech you that you do in nowise omit this. Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring a speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand. To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever."

What Mr. Lincoln said in this paper, touching the dissatisfaction with which his revocation of General Hunter's order of emancipation had been received, was true. People were tired of the governmental protection of slavery in the rebel states; and they had reason to be. Mr. Lincoln felt all this, but he could not forsake his friends, until he had tried every means to save them. In his revocation of General Hunter's order, one of the most beautiful and touching appeals that man ever penned, occurs-an appeal which the mistaken men before him had already had the opportunity of reading. In that paper, after quoting the resolution which Congress had passed pledging the country to compensation for emancipation, he said:

"To the people of those states I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue-I beseech you to make the argument for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The changes it contemplates would come gently as the dews of Heaven, not rending nor wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time, as, in the providence of God, it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it."

Still forbearing, still arguing, still beseeching, Mr. Lincoln stood before these border-state legislators, for whose sake he was suffering sharp reproach in the house of his best friends; but they were unmoved. They could not read the signs of