There is no reason to suppose that he did not still hold, as he had done in the days of the Douglas debates, that it was undesirable, if not impossible, that the two races should endeavor to abide together in freedom as a unified community.  In the inevitable hostility and competition he clearly saw that the black man was likely to fare badly.  It was by such feelings that he was led straight to the plan of compensation of owners and colonization of freedmen, and to the hope that a system of gradual emancipation, embodying these principles, might be voluntarily undertaken by the Border States under the present stress.  If the executive and the legislative departments should combine upon the policy of encouraging and aiding such steps as any Border State could be induced to take in this direction, the President believed that he could much more easily extend loyalty and allegiance among the people of those States,—­a matter which he valued far more highly than other persons were inclined to do.  Such were his views and such his wishes.  To discuss their practicability and soundness would only be to wander in the unprofitable vagueness of hypothesis, for in spite of all his efforts they were never tested by trial.  It must be admitted that general opinion, both at that day and ever since, has regarded them as visionary; compensation seemed too costly, colonization probably was really impossible.

After the President had suggested his views in his message he waited patiently to see what action Congress would take concerning them.  Three months elapsed and Congress took no such action.  On the contrary, Congress practically repudiated them.  Not only this, it was industriously putting into the shape of laws many other ideas, which were likely to prove so many embarrassments and obstructions to that policy which the President had very thoughtfully and with deep conviction marked out for himself.  He determined, therefore, to present it once more, before it should be rendered forever hopeless.  On March 6, 1862, he sent to Congress a special message, recommending the adoption of a joint resolution:  “That the United States ought to cooperate 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 inconvenience, both public and private, produced by such change of system.”  The first paragraph in the message stated briefly the inducements to the North:  “The Federal government would find its highest interest in such a measure, as one of the most efficient means of self-preservation.  The leaders of the existing insurrection entertain the hope that this government will ultimately be forced to acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and that all the slave States north of such part will then say:  ’The Union for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with the Southern section.’  To deprive them of