ch
harder to pay for the war than will be a dollar for emancipation on the
proposed plan. And then the latter will cost no blood, no precious life.
It will be a saving of both.

As to the second article, I think it would be impracticable to return
to bondage the class of persons therein contemplated. Some of them,
doubtless, in the property sense belong to loyal owners, and hence
Provision is made in this article for compensating such.

The third article relates to the future of the freed people. It does not
oblige, but merely authorizes Congress to aid in colonizing such as may
consent. This ought nut to be regarded as objectionable on the one hand or
on the other, insomuch as it comes to nothing unless by the mutual
consent of the people to be deported and the American voters through their
representatives in Congress.

I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor
colonization; and yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against
free colored persons remaining in the country which is largely imaginary,
if not sometimes malicious.

It is insisted that their presence would injure and displace white labor
and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch
arguments that time surely is not now. In times like the present men
should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible
through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that colored people can
displace any more white labor by being free than by remaining slaves?
If they stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers; if they
leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. Logically,
there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, even without
deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and very
surely would not reduce them. Thus the customary amount of labor would
still have to be performed. The freed people would surely not do more than
their old proportion of it, and very probably for a time would do less,
leaving an increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor
into greater demand, and consequently enhancing the wages of it. With
deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor
is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the
market-increase the demand for it and you increase the price of it. Reduce
the supply of black labor by colonizing the black laborer out of the
country, and by precisely so much