enough to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go.

I am pressed with a difficulty not yet mentioned-one which threatendivision among those who, united, are none too strong. An instance of it is known to you. General Hunter is an honest man. He was, and I hope still is, my friend. I valued him none the less for his agreeing with me in the general wish that all men everywhere could be free. He proclaimed all men free within certain States, and I repudiated the procla mation. He expected more good and less harm from the measure than I could believe would follow. Yet, in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offence, to many whose support the country cannot afford to lose. And this is not the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon me, and is increasing. By conceding what I now ask you can relieve me, and, much more, can relieve the country in this important point.

Upon these considerations, I have again begged your attention to the Message of March last. Before leaving the Capital, consider and discuss it among yourselves. You are patriots and statesmen, and as such I pray you consider this proposition; and, at the least, commend it to the consideration of your States and people. As you would perpetuate popular government for the best people in the world, I beseech you that you do in nowise omit this. Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring a speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand. To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever.

The members to whom the President thus appealed were divided in opinion as to the merits of the proposition which he had laid before them. A majority of them submitted an elaborate reply, in which they dissented from the President's opinion that the adoption of this policy would terminate the war or serve the Union cause. They held it to be his duty to avoid all interference, direct or indirect, with slavery in the Southern States. and attributed much of the stubborn hostility which the South had shown in prosecuting the war, to the fact that Congress had departed in various instances from the spirit and objects for which the war ought to be prosecuted by the Government. A minority of those members, not being able to concur in this reply, submitted one of their own, in which they thus set forth their view

of the motives of the President in the course he had adopted, and expressed their substantial concurrence in its justice and wisdom :

We believe that the whole power of the Government, upheld and sustained by all the influences and means of all loyal men in all sections and of all parties, is essentially necessary, to put down the rebellion and preserve the Union and the Constitution. We understand your appeal to us to have been made for the purpose of securing this result. A very large portion of the people in the Northern States believe that slavery is the "lever power of the rebellion." It matters not whether this opinion is well founded or not. The belief does exist, and we have to deal with things as they are, and not as we would have them be. In consequence of the existence of this belief, we understand that an immense pressure is brought to bear for the purpose of striking down this institution through the exercise of military authority. The Government cannot maintain this great struggle if the support and influence of the men who entertain these opinions be withdrawn. Neither can the Government hope for early success if the support of that element called "conservative" be withdrawn.

Such being the condition of things, the President appeals to the Border Stato men to step forward and prove their patriotisin by making the first sacrifice. No doubt, like appeals have been made to extreme men in the North, to meet us half way, in order that the whole moral, political, pecuniary, and physical force of the nation may be firmly and earnestly united in one grand effort to save the Union and the Constitution.

Believing that such were the motives that prompted your address, and such the results to which it looked, we cannot reconcile it to our sense of duty, in this trying hour, to respond in a spirit of fault-finding or querulousness over the things that are past. We are not disposed to seek for the cause of present misfortunes in the errors and wrongs of others who propose to unite with us in a common purpose. But, on the other hand, we meet your address in the spirit in which it was made, and, as loyal Americans, declare to you and to the world, that there is no sacrifice that we are not ready to make to save the Government and institutions of our fathers. That we, few of us though there may be, will permit no men, from the North or from the South, to go further than we in the accomplishment of the great work before us. That, in order to carry out these views, we will, so far as may be in our power, ask the people of the Border States calmly, deliberately, and fairly, to consider your recommendations. We are the more emboldened to assume this position from the fact, now become history, that the leaders of the Southern rebellion have offered to abolish slavery amongst them as a condition to foreign intervention in favor of their independence as a nation.

If they can give up slavery to destroy the Union, we can surely

ask our people to consider the question of emancipation to save the Union.

Hon. Horace Maynard, of Tennessee, on the 16th of July submitted to the President his views of the question, in which he thus set forth his appreciation of the motives which had induced him to make the proposition in question to the Southern States:

Your whole administration gives the highest assurance that you are moved, not so much from a desire to see all men everywhere made free, as from a desire to preserve free institutions for the benefit of men already free; not to make slaves free men, but to prevent free men from being made slaves; not to destroy an institution which a portion of us only consider bad, but to save an institution which we all alike consider good. I am satisfied that you would not ask from any of your fellowcitizens a sacrifice not in your judgment imperatively required by the safety of the country. This is the spirit of your appeal, and I respond to it in the same spirit.

Determined to leave undone nothing which it was in his power to do to effect the object he had so much at heart, the President, on the 12th of July, sent in to Congress a Message transmitting the draft of a bill upon the subject, as follows:

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives :—

Herewith is the draft of the bill to compensate any State which may abolish slavery within its limits, the passage of which, substantially as presented, I respectfully and earnestly recommend.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled:-That whenever the President of the United States shall be satisfied that any State shall have lawfully abolished slavery within and throughout such State, either immediately or gradually, it shall be the duty of the President, assisted by the Secretary of the Treasury, to prepare and deliver to each State an amount of six per cent. interest-bearing bonds of the United States, equal to the aggregate value at dollars per head of all the slaves within such State as reported by the census of 1860; the whole amount for any one State to be delivered at once, if the abolishment be immediate, or in equal annual instalments, if it be gradual, interest to begin running on each bond at the time of delivery, and not before.

And be it further enacted, That if any State, having so received any such bonds, shall at any time afterwards by law reintroduce or tolerate slavery within its limits, contrary to the act of abolishment upon which such bonds shall have been received, said bonds so received by said State

shall at once be null and void, in whosesoever hands they may be, and such State shall refund to the United States all interest which may have been paid on such bonds.

The bill was referred to a committee, but no action was taken upon it in Congress, nor did any of the Border States respond to the President's invitation. The proposition, however, served a most excellent purpose in testing the sentiment of both sections of the country, and in preparing the way for the more vigorous treatment of the subject of slavery which the blind and stubborn prejudices of the slaveholding communities were rapidly rendering inevitable.

Two other subjects of importance engaged the attention and received the action of Congress during this session: the provision of a currency, and the amendment of the law to confiscate the property of rebels. A bill authorizing the issue of Treasury notes to the amount of $150,000,000, and making them a legal tender in all business transactions, was reported in the House by the Finance Committee, of which Hon. E. G. Spaulding, of New York, was Chairman, and taken up for discussion on the 17th of June. It was advocated mainly on the score of necessity, and was opposed on the ground of its alleged unconstitutionality. The division of sentiment on the subject was not a party one, some of the warmest friends and supporters of the Administration doubting whether Congress had the power to make any thing but silver and gold a legal tender in the payment of debts. The same bill provided for a direct tax, involving stamp duties, taxes upon incomes, etc., sufficient with the duties upon imports to raise $150,000,000 per annum, and also for the establishment of a system of free banking, by which banknotes to be circulated as currency might be issued upon the basis of stocks of the United States deposited as security. The bill was discussed at length, and was finally adopted by a vote of ninety-three to fifty-nine. In the Senate it encountered a similar opposition, but passed by a vote of thirty to seven, a motion to strike out the legaltender clause having been previously rejected-seven

teen voting in favor of striking it out, and twenty-two against it.

The subject of confiscating the property of rebels excited still deeper interest. A bill for that purpose was taken up in the Senate, on the 25th of February, for discussion. By one of its sections all the slaves of any person, anywhere in the United States, aiding the rebellion, were declared to be forever free, and subsequent sections provided for colonizing slaves thus enfranchised. The bill was advocated on the ground that in no other way could the property of rebels, in those States where the judicial authority of the United States had been overborne, be reached; while it was opposed on the ground that it was unconstitutional, and that it would tend to render the Southern people still more united and desperate in their rebellion. By the confiscation act of the previous session, a slave who had been employed in aiding the rebellion was declared to be free; but the fact that he had been thus employed must be shown by due judicial process; by this bill all the slaves of any person who had been thus engaged were set free without the intervention of any judicial process whatever. This feature of the bill was warmly opposed by some of the ablest and most reliable of the supporters of the Administration, as a departure from all recognized rules of proceeding, and as a direct interference with slavery in the States, in violation of the most solemn pledge of the Government, the Republican party, and individual supporters of the Administration. Senator Collamer, of Vermont, urged this view of the case with great cogency, citing Mr. Sumner's opinion expressed on the 25th of February, 1861, when, on presenting a memorial to the Senate in favor of abolishing slavery, he had added: "In offering it, I take this occasion to declare most explicitly that I do not think that Congress has any right to interfere with slavery in a State;" and quoting also Senator Fessenden's declaration in the debate on abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, when he said: "I have held, and I hold to-day, and I say to-day what I have said in my