Private
Executive Mansion
Washington, 9 March
1862.
My dear Sir:
I am grateful to the New York journals, and not less so to the
“Times” than to others, for their kind notices of the late special message to
Congress.
Your paper, however, intimates that the proposition, though
well intentioned, must fail on the score of expense. I do hope you will
reconsider this. Have you noticed the facts that less than one half-day's cost of
this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at $400 per head — that eighty-seven
days' cost of this war would pay for all in Delaware, Maryland, District of
Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri at the same price? Were those States to take the
step, do you doubt that it would shorten the war more than eighty-seven days, and
thus be an actual saving of expense?
Please look at these things and consider whether there should
not be another article in the “Times.”
Yours very truly,
a. lincoln
SOURCE: A copy of this
letter can be found in the Abraham Lincoln Papers
at the Library of Congress.
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