solemnly declared, "and as such I
pray you to consider this proposition, and at the least commend it to
the consideration of your States and people. Our common country is in
grave peril demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring it
speedy relief. You can make it possible to accomplish the just
destruction of this curse of our life. It will bring emancipation as a
voluntary process, leaving the least resentment in the minds of our
slave-holders. It will not be a violent war measure, to be remembered
with fierce rebellious anger. It will pave the way for good feeling at
last between all sections when reunited. It is reasonable. It is just.
It will leave no cause for sectional enmity. This plan of gradual
emancipation with pay for each slave to his owner will secure peace more
speedily and maintain it more permanently than can be done by force
alone. Its cost could be easier paid than the additional cost of war and
would sacrifice no blood at all.

"In giving freedom to the _slave_, we _assure_ freedom to the
_free_--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall
nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may
succeed. This could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous,
just--a way which if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God
must forever bless."

His tender, eloquent appeal fell on deaf ears. The men who represented
the Border Slave States refused to permit the question of tampering with
Slavery to be submitted to their people--no matter by what process, with
or without pay.

They demanded with sullen persistence that the President defy all shades
of Northern opinion and stand squarely by his Inaugural address. In vain
he pointed out to them that the fact of a desperate and terrible war,
costing two million dollars a day and threatening the existence of the
Government itself, had changed the conditions under which he made that
pledge.

When the President at last introduced into Congress through his
spokesman the bill appropriating fifteen million dollars with which to
pay for their slaves, the men from the Border States united with the
Democrats and defeated it!

With a sorrowful heart and deep forebodings of the future he turned to
his desk and drew forth the document he had written declaring as an act
of war against the States in rebellion that their slaves should be free.

He read its provisions again with the utmost care. He made no atta