honorable bodies which shall be
substantially as follows:

"Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which
may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary
aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the
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, there is the end; 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. The Federal
Government would find its highest interest in such a measure, as one of
the most efficient means of self-preservation. The leaders of the existing
insurrection entertain the hope that this government will ultimately be
forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected
region, and that all the slave States north of such part will then say,
"The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now
choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope
substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation
completely deprives them of it as to all the States initiating it. The
point is not that all the States tolerating slavery would very soon, if at
all, initiate emancipation; but that, while the offer is equally made to
all, the more northern shall by such initiation make it certain to the
more southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in
their proposed confederacy. I say "initiation" because, in my judgment,
gradual and not sudden emancipation is better for all. In the mere
financial or pecuniary view, any member of Congress with the census tables
and treasury reports before him can readily see for himself how very soon
the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at fair valuation,
all the slaves in any named State. Such a proposition on the part of the
General Government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to
interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the
absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people
immediately interested. It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free
choice with them.

In the annual message last December, I thought fit to say, "The Union must
be pres