sed a bill abolishing
slavery in the District of Columbia--a measure for which Lincoln had
himself introduced a bill while a member of Congress. In confirming the
act as President, he remarked privately: "Little did I dream in 1849,
when as a member of Congress I proposed to abolish slavery at this
capital, and could scarcely get a hearing for the proposition, that it
would be so soon accomplished."

Emancipation measures moved rapidly in 1862. On June 19 Congress enacted
a measure prohibiting slavery forever in all present and future
territories of the United States. July 17 a law was passed authorizing
the employment of negroes as soldiers, and conferring freedom on all who
should render military service, and on the families of all such as
belonged to disloyal owners. Two days later, in a conference appointed
by him at the Executive Mansion, the President submitted to the members
of Congress from the Border States a written appeal, in which he said:

Believing that you, in 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.... 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
selle