followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

Beautiful and impressive as was this appeal, it persuaded few or none.
In fact, no effort on the President's part now, or at any time, could
win much approval for his plan. Not many were ever pleased by it; but
afterward, in the winter of 1863, many members of the Thirty-eighth
Congress were willing, without believing in it, to give him a chance to
try it in Missouri. Accordingly a bill then passed the House
appropriating $10,000,000 to compensate slave-owners in that State, if
abolition of slavery should be made part of its organic law. The Senate
made the sum $15,000,000 and returned the bill to the House for
concurrence. But the representatives from Missouri were tireless in
their hostility to the measure, and finally killed it by parliamentary
expedients of delay.

This was a great disappointment to Mr. Lincoln. While the measure was
pending he argued strenuously with leading Missourians to induce them to
put their State in the lead in what he hoped would then become a
procession of slave States. But these gentlemen seemed to fear that, if
they should take United States bonds in payment, they might awake some
morning in these troublous times to find their promiser a bankrupt or a
repudiationist. On the other hand, such was the force of habit that a
slave seemed to them very tangible property. Mr. Lincoln shrewdly
suggested that, amid present conditions, "_bonds_ were better than
_bondsmen_," and "two-legged property" was a very bad kind to hold. Time
proved him to be entirely right; but for the present his argument,
entreaty, and humor were all alike useless. Missouri would have nothing
to do with "compensated emancipation;" and since she was regarded as a
test case, the experiment was not tried elsewhere. So it came to pass
afterward that the slaveholders parted with their slaves for nothing