During the second session of the Thirtieth Congress Mr. Lincoln made no long speeches, but in addition to the usual routine work devolved on him by the committee of which he was a member, he busied himself in preparing a special measure which, because of its relation to the great events of his later life, needs to be particularly mentioned. Slavery existed in Maryland and Virginia when these States ceded the territory out of which the District of Columbia was formed. Since, by that cession, this land passed under the exclusive control of the Federal government, the "institution" within this ten miles square could no longer be defended by the plea of State sovereignty, and antislavery sentiment naturally demanded that it should cease. Pro-slavery statesmen, on the other hand, as persistently opposed its removal, partly as a matter of pride and political consistency, partly because it was a convenience to Southern senators and members of Congress, when they came to Washington, to bring their family servants where the local laws afforded them the same security over their black chattels which existed at their homes. Mr. Lincoln, in his Peoria speech in 1854, emphasized the sectional dispute with this vivid touch of local color: "The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive-slave law. The North clamored for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained for fifty years." Thus the question remained a minor but never ending bone of contention and point of irritation, and excited debate arose in the Thirtieth Congress over a House resolution that the Committee on the Judiciary be instructed to report a bill as soon as practicable prohibiting the slave trade in the District of Columbia. In this situation of affairs, Mr. Lincoln conceived the fond hope that he might be able to present a plan of compromise. He already entertained the idea which in later years during his presidency he urged upon both Congress and the border slave States, that the just and generous mode of getting rid of the barbarous institution of slavery was by a system of compensated emancipation giving freedom to the slave and a money indemnity to the owner. He therefore carefully framed a bill providing for the abolishment of slavery in the District upon the following principal conditions: _First_. That the law should be adopted by a popular vote in the District. _Second_. A temporary system of apprenticeship and gradual emancipation for children born of slave mothers after January 1, 1850. _Third_. The government to pay full cash value for slaves voluntarily manumitted by their owners. _Fourth_. Prohibiting bringing slaves into the District, or selling them out of it.