Page:Journal of Negro History, vol. 7.djvu/310

 day would pay for all the slaves in Delaware at $400 each, and that less than eighty-seven days' cost of the war would compensate the slaveowners of Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, and Missouri for all the slaves at the same rate.

The next step took the form of Roscoe Conkling's joint resolution to this effect recommended by Lincoln in his special message of March 6. At the same time Lincoln assembled the Congressmen from the border slave States of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri at the Executive Mansion, where a prolonged discussion of the subject ensued. Lincoln tried to convince these Congressmen of the good faith of the administration, and suggested to them that they take this question of gradual abolition into serious consideration, for the Government of the United States had no right to coerce them. He asserted that emancipation was exclusively a State affair; and that his purpose was simply to present the proposition. Yet probably one reason for the failure of these Congressmen of the border slave States to make a favorable reply or to commit themselves in any way was that they were well aware of Lincoln's determination, according to his special message of March 6, to use all means to save the Union; and they, furthermore, understood the hint that necessity might force him to resort to extreme measures. While this proposition gained no headway with the border slave States, the joint resolution was approved by Congress and received the signature of the President on April 10.

Congress then passed an important measure, the expediency of which Lincoln urged in 1849. This was emancipation in the District of Columbia. Lincoln made no specific recommendations relative to this in his annual message, but later sent a special message to Congress March 6, 1862, taking up the subject in its more extensive aspects. This bill provided for the immediate emancipa-