When the President at last introduced into Congress through his
spokesman the bill appropriating fifteen million dollars with which to
pay for their slaves, the men from the Border States united with the
Democrats and defeated it!
With a sorrowful heart and deep forebodings of the future he turned to
his desk and drew forth the document he had written declaring as an act
of war against the States in rebellion that their slaves should be free.
He read its provisions again with the utmost care. He made no attack on
Slavery, or the slave-holder. He was striking the blow against the
wealth and power of the South for the sole purpose of crippling her
resources and weakening her power to continue the struggle to divide the
Union. There was in it not one word concerning the rights of man or the
equal rights of black and white men. His mind was absolutely clear on
that point. The negro when freed would be an alien race so low in the
scale of being, so utterly different in temperament and character from
the white man that their remaining in physical contact with each other
in our Republic was unthinkable. In the Emancipation Proclamation
itself, therefore, he had written the principles of the colonization of
the negro race. The two things were inseparable. He could conceive of no
greater calamity befalling the Nation than to leave the freed black man
within its borders as an eternal menace to its future happiness and
progress.
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