March 6, 1862.
Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and House of
Representatives:
I recommend the adoption of a joint resolution by your
honorable bodies, which shall be substantially as follows:
Resolved, That the United States
ought to cooperate 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 institution 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.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
SOURCE: James D. Richardson, Editor, A Compilation of the
Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume 8, p. 3269-70
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