the Radicals, gave his voice against "the most diluted milk-and-water gruel proposition that had ever been given to the

American nation." Hickman of Pennsylvania, until 1860 a Democrat, but now a Republican, with the characteristic vehemence of a proselyte said: "Neither the message nor the resolution is manly and open. They are both covert and insidious. They do not become the dignity of the President of the United States. The message is not such a document as a full-grown, independent man should publish to the nation at such a time as the present, when positions should be freely and fully defined." In the Senate, Mr. Powell of Kentucky translated the second paragraph into blunt words. He said that it held a threat of ultimate coercion, if the cooperative plan should fail; and he regarded "the whole thing" as "a pill of arsenic, sugar-coated."

But, though so many insisted upon uttering their fleers in debate, yet, when it came to voting, they could not well discredit their President by voting down the resolution on the sole ground that it was foolish and ineffectual. So, after it had been abused sufficiently, it was passed by about the usual party majority: 89 to 34 in the House; 32 to 10 in the Senate. Thus Congress somewhat sneeringly handed back to the President his bantling, with free leave to do what he could with it.

Not discouraged by such grudging and unsympathetic permission, Mr. Lincoln at once set about his experiment. He told Lovejoy and Arnold, strenuous Abolitionists, but none the less his near friends, that they would live to see the end of

slavery, if only the Border States would cooperate in his project. On March 10, 1862, he gathered some of the border-state members and tried to win them over to his views. They listened coldly; but he was not dismayed by their demeanor, and on July 12 he again convened them, and this time laid before them a written statement. This paper betrays by its earnestness of argument and its almost beseeching tone that he wrote it from his heart. The reasons which he urged were as follows:—

"Believing that you of the Border States hold more power for good than any other equal number of members, I felt it a duty which I cannot justifiably waive to make this appeal to you.

"I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially ended.

"And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent and swift means of ending it. Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no event will the States you represent ever join their proposed Confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest. But you cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them as long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within your own States; beat them at election as you have overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they

still claim you as their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more forever. Most of you have treated me with kindness and consideration; and I trust you will not now think I improperly touch what is exclusively your own, when, for the sake of the whole country, I ask: can you, for your States, do better than to take the course I urge? Discarding punctilio and maxims adapted to more manageable times, and looking only to the unprecedentedly stern facts of our case, can you do better in any possible event? You prefer that the constitutional relation of the States to the nation shall be practically restored without disturbance of the institution; and if this were done, my whole duty in this respect under the Constitution and my oath of office would be performed. But it is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war.

"The incidents of the war cannot be avoided. If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion,—by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. How much better for you and your people to take the step which at once shortens the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event. How much better to thus save the money which else we

sink forever in the war. How much better to do it while we can, lest the war erelong render us pecuniarily unable to do it. How much better for you, as seller, and the nation, as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war never could have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's throats. I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually."

He closed with an ardent appeal to his hearers, as "patriots and statesmen," to consider his proposition, invoking them thereto as they "would perpetuate popular government for the best people in the world."

Thirty gentlemen listened to this paper and took two days to consider it. Then twenty of them signed a response which was, in substance, their repudiation of the President's scheme. They told him that hitherto they had been loyal "under the most discouraging circumstances and in face of measures most distasteful to them and injurious to the interests they represented, and in the hearing of doctrines, avowed by those who claimed to be his friends, most abhorrent to themselves and their constituents." They objected that the measure involved "interference with what exclusively belonged to the States;" that perhaps it was unconstitutional; that it would involve an "immense outlay," beyond what the finances could bear; that it was "the annunciation of a sentiment" rather

than a "tangible proposition;" they added that the sole purpose of the war must be "restoring the Constitution to its legitimate authority." Seven others of the President's auditors said politely, but very vaguely, that they would "ask the people of the Border States calmly, deliberately, and fairly to consider his recommendations." Maynard, of the House, and Henderson, of the Senate, alone expressed their personal approval.

Even this did not drive all hope out of Mr. Lincoln's heart. His proclamation, rescinding that order of General Hunter which purported to free slaves in certain States, was issued on May 19. In it he said that the resolution, which had been passed at his request, "now stands an authentic, definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and people most interested in the subject-matter. To the people of these States I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue; I beseech you to make the arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews from Heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past time as in the providence of God it is now your

high privilege to do. May the vast