The President on Emancipation.

If proof were wanting of the patriotic ardor of the President for the peace and well being of the country, it would be found abundantly in the message sent yesterday to Congress. Mr. Lincoln appreciates the infinite difficulty of the Slavery question. He evidently despairs of prostrating the institution by force of the war-power; he looks to its existence in full vigor, throughout the Gulf States at least, when the war shall have ended. The utmost reach of his practical dealing with the subject is to strip it of political influence in National affairs. To effect this capital object, there is certainly no way so sure as to destroy the identity of interest between Border Slave States and those at the southward; and this object the President's suggestion proposes to attain. It takes the form of a joint resolution submitted to the consideration of Congress. The possibility of one or more States discovering the impolicy of retaining slave-labor is assumed. To such the joint resolution offers pecuniary aid in the task of emancipation, by engaging to pay a sum prefixed for each enslaved negro set at liberty. This bounty the President evidently believes will turn the scale in favor of freedom. Satisfied of the good faith of the National Government in its professions of non-intervention in the legislation of the States, the States will be ready to look favorably upon a plan which, while it makes the merit of the act of emancipation their own, throws the cost elsewhere. And as the plan is adopted, one after another of the northerly Slave States will array themselves on the side of the free communities of the North.

In considering the Presidential project, a number of difficulties will no doubt suggest themselves to Congress. Any State disposed to part with its negroes will naturally offer them in the best market. The extreme South, in the supposition raised by Mr. Lincoln that Slavery will there retain all its vitality, will compete with the North in the purchase of the discarded labor; and must of necessity offer prices which the North will be unable to pay. When peace shall be restored -- always assuming the President to be right in regard to Slavery in the Gulf States – Kentucky will be able to get $130,000,000 for her negroes at the South, while the North, presupposing the round price of $200 – the highest rate heretofore named, and considered practicable – would be able to offer only one-third of that amount. If by an act of gradual emancipation Kentucky is thus able at any moment to get the larger sum for her slaves, what temptation to the passage of such an act will be the offer of the smaller? Congress will also have to weigh well that incessantly recurring question, what shall be done with the negroes when freed? Their freedom in any border State will no doubt be followed by their expulsion. Even from Illinois, Mr. Lincoln's immediate State, the blacks are about to be expelled. Will it not be necessary for the National Government to provide also for their removal from the country, and their colonization and christianization in a new and distant home? And will not this cost, added to the other, constitute a total from which the country, already startled at the coming terror of war taxation, will draw back appalled ? We fear that the Presidential plan will not achieve the good for which it is so patriotically designed. It will not induce any Slave State to discard Slavery; it will not, therefore, weaken any of the ties between the collective Slave States. It will offer no sufficient reason for departing, even in appearance, from the doctrine that, with Slavery in the States, the National Government has no concern whatever. It will be attended with an expense too overwhelming to be regarded favorably by a people who have already upon their shoulders the burden present and prospective of a debt of several thousands of millions – a burden placed there by Slavery. But let the plan have full discussion; let it also have full credit, as evidence that the Government contemplates no forcible interference with the institutions of any State, rebellious or loyal, and desirable good may grow out of it.

– Published in The New York Times, March 7, 1862