“The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive-slave law.  The North clamored for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty years.”

Thus the question remained a minor but never ending bone of contention and point of irritation, and excited debate arose in the Thirtieth Congress over a House resolution that the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report a bill as soon as practicable prohibiting the slave trade in the District of Columbia.  In this situation of affairs, Mr. Lincoln conceived the fond hope that he might be able to present a plan of compromise.  He already entertained the idea which in later years during his presidency he urged upon both Congress and the border slave States, that the just and generous mode of getting rid of the barbarous institution of slavery was by a system of compensated emancipation giving freedom to the slave and a money indemnity to the owner.  He therefore carefully framed a bill providing for the abolishment of slavery in the District upon the following principal conditions: 

First.  That the law should be adopted by a popular vote in the District.

Second.  A temporary system of apprenticeship and gradual emancipation for children born of slave mothers after January 1, 1850.

Third.  The government to pay full cash value for slaves voluntarily manumitted by their owners.

Fourth.  Prohibiting bringing slaves into the District, or selling them out of it.

Fifth.  Providing that government officers, citizens of slave States, might bring with them and take away again, their slave house-servants.

Sixth.  Leaving the existing fugitive-slave law in force.

When Mr. Lincoln presented this amendment to the House, he said that he was authorized to state that of about fifteen of the leading citizens of the District of Columbia, to whom the proposition had been submitted, there was not one who did not approve the adoption of such a proposition.  He did not wish to be misunderstood.  He did not know whether or not they would vote for this bill on the first Monday in April; but he repeated that out of fifteen persons to whom it had been submitted, he had authority to say that every one of them desired that some proposition like this should pass.

While Mr. Lincoln did not so state to the House, it was well understood in intimate circles that the bill had the approval on the one hand of Mr. Seaton, the conservative mayor of Washington, and on the other hand of Mr. Giddings, the radical antislavery member of the House of Representatives.  Notwithstanding the singular merit of the bill in reconciling such extremes of opposing factions in its support, the temper of Congress had already become too hot to accept such a rational and practical solution, and Mr. Lincoln’s wise proposition was not allowed to come to a vote.