Among the friends of the Union there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race amongst us.  Some would perpetuate slavery; some would abolish it suddenly and without compensation; some would abolish it gradually and with compensation; some would remove the freed people from us, and some would retain them with us; and there are yet other minor diversities.  Because of these diversities we waste much strength in struggles among ourselves.  By mutual concession we should harmonize and act together.  This would be compromise, but it would be compromise among the friends and not with the enemies of the Union.  These articles are intended to embody a plan of such mutual concessions.  If the plan shall be adopted, it is assumed that emancipation will follow, at least in several of the States.

As to the first article, the main points are, first, the emancipation; secondly, the length of time for consummating it (thirty-seven years); and, thirdly, the compensation.

The emancipation will be unsatisfactory to the advocates of perpetual slavery, but the length of time should greatly mitigate their dissatisfaction.  The time spares both races from the evils of sudden derangement—­ in fact, from the necessity of any derangement—­while most of those whose habitual course of thought will be disturbed by the measure will have passed away before its consummation.  They will never see it.  Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will deprecate the length of time.  They will feel that it gives too little to the now living slaves.  But it really gives them much.  It saves them from the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate emancipation in localities where their numbers are very great, and it gives the inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever.  The plan leaves to each State choosing to act under it to abolish slavery now or at the end of the century, or at any intermediate time, or by degrees extending over the whole or any part of the period, and it obliges no two States to proceed alike.  It also provides for compensation, and generally the mode of making it.  This, it would seem, must further mitigate the dissatisfaction of those who favor perpetual slavery, and especially of those who are to receive the compensation.  Doubtless some of those who are to pay and not to receive will object.  Yet the measure is both just and economical.  In a certain sense the liberation of slaves is the destruction of property—­property acquired by descent or by purchase, the same as any other property.  It is no less true for having been often said that the people of the South are not more responsible for the original introduction of this property than are the people of the North; and when it is remembered how unhesitatingly we all use cotton and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it may not be quite safe to say that the South has been more responsible than the North for its continuance.  If, then, for a common object this property is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a common charge?