But between the President's proclamation and the adjournment of Congress
military affairs underwent a most discouraging change. McClellan's
advance upon Richmond became a retreat to Harrison's Landing Halleck
captured nothing but empty forts at Corinth. Farragut found no
cooeperation at Vicksburg, and returned to New Orleans, leaving its
hostile guns still barring the commerce of the great river. Still worse,
the country was plunged into gloomy forebodings by the President's call
for three hundred thousand new troops.
About a week before the adjournment of Congress the President again
called together the delegations from the border slave States, and read
to them, in a carefully prepared paper, a second and most urgent appeal
to adopt his plan of compensated abolishment.
"Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that
in no event will the States you represent ever join their proposed
confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest. But you
cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them so
long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within
your own States. Beat them at elections, as you have overwhelmingly
done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as their own. You and I
know what the lever of their power is.
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