you increase the demand for and wages of
white labor.

But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth and cover the
whole land. Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them
any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole
country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the
one in any way greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now
having more than one free colored person to seven whites, and this without
any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia
and the States of Maryland and Delaware are all in this condition. The
District has more than one free colored to six whites, and yet in its
frequent petitions to Congress I believe it has never presented the
presence of free colored persons as one of its grievances. But why should
emancipation South send the free people North? People of any color seldom
run unless there be something to run from. Heretofore colored people to
some extent have fled North from bondage, and now, perhaps, from both
bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be
adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give
them wages at least until new laborers can be procured, and the freedmen
in turn will gladly give their labor for the wages till new homes can be
found for them in congenial climes and with people of their own blood and
race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved.
And in any event, cannot the North decide for itself whether to receive
them?

Again, as practice proves more than theory in any case, has there been
any irruption of colored people northward because of the abolishment of
slavery in this District last spring?

What I have said of the proportion of free colored persons to the whites
in the District is from the census of 1860, having no reference to
persons called contrabands nor to those made free by the act of Congress
abolishing slavery here.

The plan consisting of these articles is recommended, not but that a
restoration of the national authority would be accepted without its
adoption.

Nor will the war nor proceedings under the proclamation of September 22,
1862, be stayed because of the recommendation of this plan. Its timely
adoption, I doubt not, would bring restoration, and thereby stay both.

And notwithstanding this plan, the recommendation that Congress provide
by law for compensating any