which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State
pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to
compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such
change of system.


If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the
approval of Congress and the country, there is the end; but if it does
command such approval, I deem it of importance that the States and
people immediately interested should be at once distinctly notified of
the fact, so that they may begin to consider whether to accept or reject
it. The Federal Government would find its highest interest in such a
measure, as one of the most efficient means of self-preservation. The
leaders of the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this
Government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of
some part of the disaffected region, and that all the slave States north
of such part will then say, "The Union for which we have struggled being
already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive
them of this hope substantially ends the rebellion, and the initiation
of emancipation completely deprives them of it as to all the States
initiating it. The point is not that _all_ the States tolerating slavery
would very soon, if at all, initiate emancipation; but that while the
offer is equally made to all, the more northern shall by such initiation
make it certain to the more southern that in no event will the former
ever join the latter in their proposed confederacy. I say "initiation"
because, in my judgment, gradual and not sudden emancipation is better
for all. In the mere financial or pecuniary view any member of Congress
with the census tables and Treasury reports before him can readily see
for himself how very soon the current expenditures of this war would
purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any named State. Such a