to accomplish it by war. The incidents of the war cannot be
avoided. 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 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 seller, and the nation as buyer, to
sell out and buy out that without which the war could never have been,
than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting
one another's throats! I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of
a decision at once to emancipate gradually. Room in South America for
colonization can be obtained cheaply and in abundance, and when numbers
shall be large enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the
freed people will not be so reluctant to go.

I am pressed with a difficulty not yet mentioned--one which threatens
division among those who, united, are none too strong. An instance of it
is known to you. General Hunter is an honest man. He was, and I hope still
is, my friend. I valued him none the less for his agreeing with me in the
general wish that all men everywhere could be free. He proclaimed all men
free within certain States, and I repudiated the proclamation. He expected
more good and less harm from the measure than I could believe would
follow. Yet, in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offence, to
many whose support the country cannot afford to lose. And this is not
the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon me, and is
increasing. By conceding what I now ask you can relieve me, and, much
more, can relieve the country in this important point.

Upon these considerations, I have again begged your attention to the
message of March last. Before leaving the Capital, consider and discuss it
among yourselves. You are patriots and statesmen, and as such I pray
you consider this proposition; and, at the least, commend it to the
consideration of your States and people. As you would perpetuate po