At
that time local and national prejudice stood in the way of its
practicability; but to his logical and reasonable mind it seemed now
that the new conditions opened for it a prospect at least of initial
success.
In the late presidential election the little State of Delaware had, by a
fusion between the Bell and the Lincoln vote, chosen a Union member of
Congress, who identified himself in thought and action with the new
administration. While Delaware was a slave State, only the merest
remnant of the institution existed there--seventeen hundred and
ninety-eight slaves all told. Without any public announcement of his
purpose, the President now proposed to the political leaders of
Delaware, through their representative, a scheme for the gradual
emancipation of these seventeen hundred and ninety-eight slaves, on the
payment therefore by the United States at the rate of four hundred
dollars per slave, in annual instalments during thirty-one years to that
State, the sum to be distributed by it to the individual owners. The
President believed that if Delaware could be induced to take this step,
Maryland might follow, and that these examples would create a sentiment
that would lead other States into the same easy and beneficent path. But
the ancient prejudice still had its relentless grip upon some of the
Delaware law-makers.
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