He chose not to go far ahead of popular indications; he deemed it the wiser statesmanship, in the existing state of affairs, to keep in the lead but a little, feeling, so to speak, his way along--making haste slowly. That this would dissatisfy many of his political friends he well knew; but he, upon mature deliberation, decided that it was for the interest of the country, and that to that consideration everything else must yield.
On the 6th of March, 1862, he sent to the Congress the following message concerning this question, the resolution embodied in which, was passed by both Houses:
“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 coöperate 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.