He proposed that $400 be paid for slaves, including men, women and
children. This was a large price, and yet he showed how much cheaper it
was to purchase than to carry on the war.
At that time, at the price mentioned, there were about $750,000 worth
of slaves in Delaware. The cost of carrying on the war was at least two
millions of dollars a day, and for one-third of one day's expenses, all
the slaves in Delaware could be purchased. He also showed that all the
slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri could be bought,
at the same price, for less than the expense of carrying on the war for
eighty-seven days.
This was the wisest thing that could have been proposed, and yet such
was the madness of the South, such the indignation of the North, that
the advice was unheeded.
Again, in July, 1862, he urged on the Representatives of the
border States a scheme of gradual compensated emancipation; but the
Representatives were too deaf to hear, too blind to see.
Lincoln always hated slavery, and yet he felt the obligations and duties
of his position. In his first message he assured the South that the
laws, including the most odious of all--the law for the return of
fugitive slaves--would be enforced. The South would not hear. Afterward
he proposed to purchase the slaves of the border States, but the
proposition was hardly discussed--hardly heard. Events came thick and
fast; theories gave way to facts, and everything was left to force.
The extreme Democrat of the North was fearful that slavery might be
destroyed, that the Constitution might be broken, and that Lincoln,
after all, could not be trusted; and at the same time the radical
Republican feared that Lincoln loved the Union more than he did liberty.
The fact is, that he tried to discharge the obligations of his great
office, knowing from the first that slavery must perish. The course
pursued by Lincoln was so gentle, so kind and persistent, so wise and
logical, that millions of Northern Democrats sprang to the defence, not
only of the Union, but of his administration. Lincoln refused to be led
or hurried by Fremont or Hunter, by Greeley or Sumner. From first to
last he was the real leader, and he kept step with events.