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said Rebellion, or until this proclamation shall, by a subsequent one to be issued by the President of the United States, be modified or revoked. And I do hereby require all magistrates, attorneys, and other civil officers within the United States, and all officers and others in the military and naval services of the United States, to take distinct notice of this suspension, and to give it full effect, and all citizens of the United States to conduct and govern themselves accordingly and in conformity with the Constitution of the United States, and the laws of Congress in such case made and provided.

"In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand

and caused the seal of the United States to be
affixed, this 15th day of September, 1863, and the
Independence of the United States of America
the eighty-eighth.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

"By the President:

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WM. H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."

On the 5th day of July in the following year, Owing to the state of affairs in Kentucky, the President issued a special proclamation suspending the writ of habeas corpus in that State. On the 6th of March, 1862, Mr. Lincoln sent this message to Congress: FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE SENATE AND House of RepreSENTATIVES:— recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your

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honorable bodies, which shall be substantially as follows:

Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate 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.

If the proposition contained in the resolution does not meet the approval of Congress and the country, there is the end; but if it does command such approval, I deem it of importance that the States and people immediately interested should be at once distinctly notified of the fact, so that they may begin to

consider whether to accept or reject it. The Federal Government would find its highest interest in such a measure as one of the most efficient means of self-preservation. The leaders of the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this Government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the Slave States north of such part will then say: "The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section." To deprive them of this hope substantially ends the Rebellion, and the initiation of emancipation completely deprives them of it as to all the States initiating it. The point is not 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. In the mere financial or pecuniary view, any member of Congress, with the census-tables and treasury reports before him, can readily see for himself how very soon the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at fair valuation, all the slaves in any named State. 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 proposition now made, though an offer only, I hope it may be esteemed no offense to ask whether the pecuniary consideration tendered would not be of more value to the States and private persons concerned than are the institutions and property in it, in the present aspect of affairs.

While it is true that the adoption of the proposed resolution would be merely initiatory, and not within itself a practical measure, it is recommended in the hope that it would soon lead

to important practical results. In full view of my great responsibility to my God and to my country, I earnestly beg the attention of Congress and the people to the subject.

CHAPTER VII.

1862-WAR OF THE REBELLION-CONGRESS IN THE WINTER OF 1861 AND THE SPRING OF 1862-PROPOSITION TO THE BORDER SLAVE-STATES-THE CONFISCATION ACT- EMANCIPATION IN THE DISTRICT-A GRAND MORAL PICTURE.

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HIS startling proposition from the President was variously received throughout the country and in Congress. The border Slave-State "conservatives were opposed to it; the Democrats, who were mainly pro-slavery, were opposed to it, except those of them who had become thoroughly identified with the war party; and the Abolitionists of the straitest sect were opposed to it. But many Abolitionists, like Horace Greeley, and the great mass of the loyal people looked upon it kindly, and both at home and abroad it was viewed as a magnanimous proposition from the President, who yet held to his original desire to preserve the Union without interfering with slavery in the States, and who in view of the probable necessities of the future, now hoped to induce the States most concerned to institute a policy which would lead to the highest possible advantage to them under the uncertain circumstances, and to which the Free States might be inclined to give their assent. There was the usual false, foolish, and immoral talk in the newspapers and among politicians about the

whole question of slavery being a thing concerning nobody but slaveholders, but the States having slavery, and the only thing for which the President received any praise was the fact of his leaving the matter with them to choose or reject as they saw fit. Still the general opinion in the border Slave States was that the President had made a wrong step, that when the Slave States wanted Congress to aid them in such an enterprise, they could speak for themselves. There was also the sentiment that this gradual emancipation message was a feeler and educator, that it was designed to prepare the country gradually for the inevitable fate of the "institution;" that the message declared substantially: "This is your last chance; I wish to be fair with you, to do the best I can for you; I can not turn aside the current of I prefer to hold to my original policy; I still hope the way may be wide, and clear, and satisfactory; but what is not regarded as indispensable today may become indispensable to-morrow; uncompensated emancipation, immediate and general emancipation, may become a necessity for the perpetuation

events ;

of the Union."

A few of the Republicans in Congress, notably John Hickman and Thaddeus Stevens, then both in the House from Pennsylvania, assailed this message with considerable severity, treating it as beneath the dignity and ability of a full-grown man at such an important crisis in the affairs of the Nation.

On the 11th of March, after some discussion, the House passed the President's resolution by a vote of

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