Four days after transmitting the message the President called together the delegations in Congress from the border slave States, and in a long and earnest personal interview, in which he repeated and enforced the arguments of his message, urged upon them the expediency of adopting his plan, which he assured them he had proposed in the most friendly spirit, and with no intent to injure the interests or wound the sensibilities of the slave States.  On the day following this interview the House of Representatives adopted the joint resolution by more than a two-thirds vote; ayes eighty-nine, nays thirty-one.  Only a very few of the border State members had the courage to vote in the affirmative.  The Senate also passed the joint resolution, by about a similar party division, not quite a month later; the delay occurring through press of business rather than unwillingness.

As yet, however, the scheme was tolerated rather than heartily indorsed by the more radical elements in Congress.  Stevens, the cynical Republican leader of the House of Representatives, said: 

“I confess I have not been able to see what makes one side so anxious to pass it, or the other side so anxious to defeat it.  I think it is about the most diluted milk-and-water-gruel proposition that was ever given to the American nation.”

But the bulk of the Republicans, though it proposed no immediate practical legislation, nevertheless voted for it, as a declaration of purpose in harmony with a pending measure, and as being, on the one hand, a tribute to antislavery opinion in the North, and, on the other, an expression of liberality toward the border States.  The concurrent measure of practical legislation was a bill for the immediate emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, on the payment to their loyal owners of an average sum of three hundred dollars for each slave, and for the appointment of a commission to assess and award the amount.  The bill was introduced early in the session, and its discussion was much stimulated by the President’s special message and joint resolution.  Like other antislavery measures, it was opposed by the Democrats and supported by the Republicans, with but trifling exceptions; and by the same majority of two thirds was passed by the Senate on April 3, and the House on April 11, and became a law by the President’s signature on April 16.

The Republican majority in Congress as well as the President was thus pledged to the policy of compensated abolishment, both by the promise of the joint resolution and the fulfilment carried out in the District bill.  If the representatives and senators of the border slave States had shown a willingness to accept the generosity of the government, they could have avoided the pecuniary sacrifice which overtook the slave owners in those States not quite three years later.  On April 14, in the House of Representatives, the subject was taken up by Mr. White of Indiana, at whose instance a select