olutely
necessary.

Only a few months later he issued his first proclamation of
emancipation; but he did not do so until convinced that he must do this
in order to put down the rebellion. Long ago he had considered and in
his own mind adopted a plan of dealing with the slavery question--the
simple, easy plan which, while a member of Congress, he had proposed
for the District of Columbia--that on condition of the slave-owners
voluntarily giving up their slaves, they should be paid a fair price for
them by the Federal government. Delaware was a slave State, and seemed
an excellent place in which to try this experiment of "compensated
emancipation," as it was called; for there were, all told, only 1798
slaves left in the State. Without any public announcement of his purpose
he offered to the citizens of Delaware, through their representative in
Congress, four hundred dollars for each of these slaves, the payment
to be made, not all at once, but yearly, during a period of thirty-one
years. He believed that if Delaware could be induced to accept this
offer, Maryland might follow her example, and that afterward other
States would allow themselves to be led along the same easy way. The
Delaware House of Representatives voted in favor of the proposition, but
five of the nine members of the Delaware senate scornfully repelled the
"abolition bribe," as they chose to call it, and the project withered in
the bud.

Mr. Lincoln did not stop at this failure, but, on March 6, 1862, sent a
special message to the Senate and House of Representatives recommending
that Congress adopt a joint resolution favoring and practically offering
gradual compensated emancipation to any State that saw fit to accept
it; pointing out at the same time that the Federal government claimed no
right to interfere with slavery within the States, and that if the offer
were accepted it must be done as a matter of free choice.

The Republican journals of the North devoted considerable space to
discussing the President's plan, which, in the main, was favorably
received; but it was thought that it must fail on the score of expense.
The President answered this objection in a private letter to a Senator,
proving that less than one-half day's cost of war would pay for all
the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars each, and less than
eighty-seven days' cost of war would pay for all in Delaware, Maryland,
the District of Columbia, Kentucky and Missouri. "Do you d