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 586 Lincoln urges compensation. [1862 Maryland, but did not cause him to abandon his efforts. Turning with more hope to Congress, on March 6, 1862, he sent to the Senate and House a special message recommending the adoption of the following joint resolution: "That the United States ought to co-operate 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." "The point is," he explained, "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." With his generous proposal to compensate slave-owners he joined a prophetic warning. He repeated the declaration of his annual message that all indispensable means must be employed to preserve the Union, adding that it was impossible to foresee all the incidents and ruin which might attend a continuation of the war. "Such as may seem in- dispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle, must and will come." And replying to certain criticisms of the expensiveness of his scheme, he showed in letters that less than one half day's cost of the war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware, at $400 per head, and at the same rate, 87 days' cost of the war would pay for all in Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri. But Lincoln did not limit his efforts to mere written messages to Congress. More perhaps than any previous President, he kept up personal communication with the members of that body, whose frequent, sometimes daily, visits to the Executive Mansion were rendered necessary by the various incidents of the war. On two occasions he invited the members and senators from the border Slave States to visit him in a body, and in lengthy interviews pressed upon their favourable consideration his scheme of compensated abolition. The first of these interviews occurred on March 10, 1862; and the conversation which took place was substantially reported by one of those present. Repeating the arguments of his special message, Lincoln further reminded them that the offer was not only made in good faith, but that it contemplated a thoroughly voluntary action on both sides. It recognised that eman- cipation was a subject exclusively under control of the States, and that his plan left it to their own initiative and management ; that he did not ask an immediate answer from them, but wished them to take the subject into serious consideration. On the same day the joint resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives, and promptly passed by about a two-thirds majority. In the Senate it was debated for some weeks, but that body also passed it by about the same majority ; and it was signed by the President on April 10.