A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 6, part 1: Abraham Lincoln
History
A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 6, part 1: Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865; Presidents -- United States; United States -- History -- Sources; United States -- Politics and government
The emancipation will be unsatisfactory to the advocates of perpetual
slavery, but the length of time should greatly mitigate their
dissatisfaction. The time spares both races from the evils of sudden
derangement-- in fact, from the necessity of any derangement--while most
of those whose habitual course of thought will be disturbed by the
measure will have passed away before its consummation. They will never
see it. Another class will hail the prospect of emancipation, but will
deprecate the length of time. They will feel that it gives too little to
the now living slaves. But it really gives them much. It saves them from
the vagrant destitution which must largely attend immediate emancipation
in localities where their numbers are very great, and it gives the
inspiring assurance that their posterity shall be free forever. The plan
leaves to each State choosing to act under it to abolish slavery now or
at the end of the century, or at any intermediate time, or by degrees
extending over the whole or any part of the period, and it obliges no
two States to proceed alike. It also provides for compensation, and
generally the mode of making it. This, it would seem, must further
mitigate the dissatisfaction of those who favor perpetual slavery, and
especially of those who are to receive the compensation. Doubtless some
of those who are to pay and not to receive will object. Yet the measure
is both just and economical. In a certain sense the liberation of slaves
is the destruction of property--property acquired by descent or by
purchase, the same as any other property. It is no less true for having
been often said that the people of the South are not more responsible
for the original introduction of this property than are the people of
the North; and when it is remembered how unhesitatingly we all use
cotton and sugar and share the profits of dealing in them, it may not be
quite safe to say that the South has been more responsible than the
North for its continuance. If, then, for a common object this property
is to be sacrificed, is it not just that it be done at a common charge?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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