“Resolved, that the United States ought to cooeperate with any State 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.”

“The point is not,” said his explanatory message, “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....  Such a proposition on the part of the general government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested.  It is proposed as a matter of perfectly free choice with them.  In the annual message last December I thought fit to say, ’The Union must be preserved; and hence, all indispensable means must be employed.’  I said this, not hastily, but deliberately.  War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable means to this end.  A practical reacknowledgment of the national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease.  If, however, resistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin which may follow it.  Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency toward ending the struggle, must and will come.”

The Republican journals of the North devoted considerable discussion to the President’s message and plan, which, in the main, were very favorably received.  Objection was made, however, in some quarters that the proposition would be likely to fail on the score of expense, and this objection the President conclusively answered in a private letter to a senator.

“As to the expensiveness of the plan of gradual emancipation, with compensation, proposed in the late message, please allow me one or two brief suggestions.  Less than one half-day’s cost of this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at four hundred dollars per head....  Again, less than eighty-seven days’ cost of this war would, at the same price, pay for all in Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Kentucky and Missouri....  Do you doubt that taking the initiatory steps on the part of those States and this District would shorten the war more than eighty-seven days, and thus be an actual saving of expense?”