the Rebellion in ninety days."

"'There will be profit and reputation in the contract I may
propose,' said the President. 'It is to remove the whole colored
race of the slave States into Texas. If you have any acquaintance
who would take that contract, I would like to see him.'

"'I know a man who would take that contract and perform it,' I
replied. 'I would be willing to put you into communication with
him, so that you might form your own opinion about him.'

"By the President's direction I requested John Bradley, a
well-known Vermonter, to come to Washington. He was at my office
the morning after I sent the telegram to him. I declined to give
him any hint of the purpose of my invitation, but took him
directly to the President. When I presented him I said: 'Here, Mr.
President, is the contractor whom I named to you yesterday.'

"I left them together. Two hours later Mr. Bradley returned to my
office overflowing with admiration for the President and
enthusiasm for his proposed work. 'The proposition is,' he said,
'to remove the whole colored race into Texas, there to establish a
republic of their own. The subject has political bearings of which
I am no judge, and upon which the President has not yet made up
his mind. But I have shown him that it is practicable. I will
undertake to remove them all within a year.'"

It is unnecessary to state that the Black Republic of Texas was a
dream that never materialized.

CHAPTER XVIII

LINCOLN AND EMANCIPATION

Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, who were Mr. Lincoln's private secretaries
during the time he was President, and afterwards the authors of his
most elaborate biography, say: "The blessings of an enfranchised race
must forever hail him as their liberator."

Says Francis Curtis in his _History of the Republican Party_, in
speaking of the President's Emancipation Proclamation: "On the 1st day
of January, 1863, the final proclamation of freedom was issued, and
every negro slave within the confines of the United States was at last
made free."

Other writers of what is claimed to be history, almost without number,
speak of the President's pronouncement as if it caused the bulwarks of
slavery to fall down very much as the walls of Jericho are said to
have done, at one blast, overwhelming the whole institution and
setting every bondman free. Indeed, there are multitudes of fairly
intelligent people who believe that slaveholdi