TELEGRAM TO GENERAL H. W. HALLECK. WAR DEPARTMENT, July 11, 1862.

MAJOR-GENERAL HALLECK, Corinth:

Governor Johnson, at Nashville, is in great trouble and anxiety about a
raid into Kentucky. The governor is a true and valuable man--indispensable
to us in Tennessee. Will you please get in communication with him,
and have a full conference with him before you leave for here? I have
telegraphed him on the subject.

A. LINCOLN.

APPEAL TO BORDER-STATES IN FAVOR OF COMPENSATED EMANCIPATION.

July 12, 1862.

GENTLEMEN:--After the adjournment of Congress now very 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 so 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