not until the spring of 1864, after all efforts for action by Congress had failed, that the AttorneyGeneral declared black soldiers to be entitled to the same pay as white soldiers. Regarding a soldier merely as a marketable commodity, doubtless the white was worth more money; yet life was about the same to each, and it was hard to see why one should be expected to sell his life for fewer dollars than satisfied the other.

Besides these measures Congress gave evidence of its sentiments by passing an act for appointing diplomatic representatives to Hayti and Liberia; also further evidence by passing certain legislation against the slave trade.

The recital of all these doings of the legislators sufficiently indicates the hostility of Congress towards slavery. In fact, a large majority both in the Senate and in the House had moved out against it upon nearly every practicable line to the extremity of the constitutional tether. Neither arguments, nor the entreaties of the border-state men, nor any considerations of policy had exercised the slightest restraining influence. It is observable that this legislation did not embody that policy which Mr. Lincoln had suggested, and to which he had become strongly attached. On the contrary, Congress had done everything to irritate, where the President wished to do everything to conciliate; Congress made that compulsory which the President hoped to make voluntary. Mr. Lincoln remained in 1862, as he had been in

1858, tolerant towards the Southern men who by inheritance, tradition, and the necessity of the situation, constituted a slave-holding community. To treat slave-ownership as a crime, punishable by confiscation and ruin, seemed to him unreasonable and merciless. Neither does he seem ever to have accepted the opinion of many Abolitionists, that the negro was the equal of the white man in natural endowment. There is no reason to suppose that he did not still hold, as he had done in the days of the Douglas debates, that it was undesirable, if not impossible, that the two races should endeavor to abide together in freedom as a unified community. In the inevitable hostility and competition he clearly saw that the black man was likely to fare badly. It was by such feelings that he was led straight to the plan of compensation of owners and colonization of freedmen, and to the hope that a system of gradual emancipation, embodying these principles, might be voluntarily undertaken by the Border States under the present stress. If the executive and the legislative departments should combine upon the policy of encouraging and aiding such steps as any Border State could be induced to take in this direction, the President believed that he could much more easily extend loyalty and allegiance among the people of those States, a matter which he valued far more highly than other persons were inclined to do. Such were his views and such his wishes. To discuss their practicability and soundness would only

be to wander in the unprofitable vagueness of hypothesis, for in spite of all his efforts they were never tested by trial. It must be admitted that general opinion, both at that day and ever since, has regarded them as visionary; compensation seemed too costly, colonization probably was really impossible.

After the President had suggested his views in his message he waited patiently to see what action Congress would take concerning them. Three months elapsed and Congress took no such action. On the contrary, Congress practically repudiated them. Not only this, it was industriously putting into the shape of laws many other ideas, which were likely to prove so many embarrassments and obstructions to that policy which the President had very thoughtfully and with deep conviction marked out for himself. He determined, therefore, to present it once more, before it should be rendered forever hopeless. On March 6, 1862, he sent to Congress a special message, recommending the adoption of a joint resolution: "That the United States ought to coöperate 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 inconvenience, both public and private, produced by such change of system." The first paragraph in the message stated briefly the inducements to the North: "The Federal government would find its highest interest in such a measure, as one of the

The

most efficient means of self-preservation. 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 that . the more northern [States] 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."

The second paragraph hinted at that which it would have been poor tact to state plainly, the reasons which would press the Border States to accept the opportunity extended to them. "If 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 institution and property in it, in the present aspect of affairs." The suggestion, between the lines, to the border slave-owners could not be misunderstood: that they would do better to sell their slaves now than to be deprived of them later.

The President's proposition was not cordially received. Pro-slavery men regarded it as an underhand movement against the institution. Mr. Crittenden expressed confidence in the President personally, but feared that the resolution "would stir up an emancipation party" in the loyal slave States. Thus the truth was made plain that emancipation, by any process, was not desired. In a debate upon a cognate measure, another Kentuckian said that there was "no division of sentiment on this question of emancipation, whether it is to be brought about by force, by fraud, or by purchase of slaves out of the public treasury." Democrats from Northern States, natural allies of the border-state men, protested vehemently against taxing their constituents to buy slave property in other States. Many Republicans also joined the Democracy against Mr. Lincoln, and spoke even with anger and insult. Thaddeus Stevens, the