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. Break that lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more forever.... If the war continues long, as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion--by the mere incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. How much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event. How much better to thus save the money which else we sink forever in the war.... Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world, its beloved history and cherished memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered inconceivably grand. To you, more than to any others, the privilege is given to assure that happiness and swell that grandeur, and to link your own names therewith forever."