A majority of the Delaware House indeed voted to
entertain the scheme. But five of the nine members of the Delaware
Senate, with hot partizan anathemas, scornfully repelled the "abolition
bribe," as they called it, and the project withered in the bud.
Mr. Lincoln did not stop at the failure of his Delaware experiment, but
at once took an appeal to a broader section of public opinion. On March
6, 1862, he sent a special message to the two houses of Congress
recommending the adoption of the following joint resolution:
"_Resolved_, that the United States ought to cooeperate 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."
"The point is not," said his explanatory message, "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.... 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.
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