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