reverses, and it might be considered a cry of despair.
He told me he thought the suggestion a wise one, and so held on to
the Proclamation until after the Battle of Antietam."]

Be that as it may, however, sufficient evidences exist, to prove that he
must have been fully aware, at the time of making that appeal to the
supposed patriotism of these Border-State men, how much, how very much,
depended on the manner of their reception of it.

To him, that meeting was a very solemn and portentous one. He had
studied the question long and deeply--not from the standpoint of his own
mere individual feelings and judgment, but from that of fair
Constitutional construction, as interpreted by the light of Natural or
General Law and right reason. What he sought to impress upon them was,
that an immediate decision by the Border-States to adopt, and in due
time carry out, with the financial help of the General Government, a
policy of gradual Emancipation, would simultaneously solve the two
intimately-blended problems of Slavery-destruction and
Union-preservation, in the best possible manner for the pockets and
feelings of the Border-State Slave-holder, and for the other interests
of both Border-State Slave-holder and Slave.

His great anxiety was to "perpetuate," as well as to save, to the People
of the World, the imperiled form of Popular Government, and assure to it
a happy and a grand future.

He begged these Congressmen from the Border-States, to help him carry
out this, his beneficent plan, in the way that was best for all, and
thus at the same time utterly deprive the Rebel Confederacy of that
hope, which still possessed them, of ultimately gathering these States
into their rebellious fold. And he very plainly, at the same time,
confessed that he desired this relief from the Abolition pressure upon
him, which had been growing more intense ever since he had repudiated
the Hunter proclamation.

But the President's earnest appeal to these loyal Representatives in
Congress from the Border-States, was, as we have seen, in vain. It
might as well have been made to actual Rebels, for all the good it did.
For, a few days afterward, they sent to him a reply signed by more than
two-thirds of those present, hitherto given at length in these pages, in
which-after loftily sneering at the proposition as "an interference by
this Government with a question which peculiarly and exclusively
belonged to" their "respective States,