Believing that you, in the border States, hold more power for good than any other equal number of members, I feel it a duty which I cannot justifiably waive, to make this appeal to you....  I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended.  And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent and swift means of ending it.  Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no event will the States you represent ever join their proposed confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest....  If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion, by the mere incidents of the war.  It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it.  Much of its value is gone already.  How much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event!  How much better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the war!  How much better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us pecuniarily unable to do it!  How much better for you as seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war could never have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another’s throats!...  I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision to emancipate gradually....  Upon these considerations I have again begged your attention to the message of March last.  Before leaving the capital, consider and discuss it among yourselves.  You are patriots and statesmen, and as such I pray you consider this proposition, and at the least commend it to the consideration of your States and people.  As you would perpetuate popular government for the best people in the world, I beseech you that you do in nowise omit this.  Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring a speedy relief.  Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world, its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand.  To you, more than any others, the privilege is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever.

In an interview with Mr. Lovejoy and Mr. Arnold, of Illinois, the day following this conference, Lincoln exclaimed:  “Oh, how I wish the border States would accept my proposition!  Then you, Lovejoy, and you, Arnold, and all of us, would not have lived in vain!  The labor of your life, Lovejoy, would be crowned with success.  You would live to see the end of slavery.”