Beautiful and impressive as was this appeal, it persuaded few or none. In fact, no effort on the President's part now, or at any time, could win much approval for his plan. Not many were ever pleased by it; but afterward, in the winter of 1863, many members of the Thirty-eighth Congress were willing, without believing in it, to give him a chance to try it in Missouri. Accordingly a bill then passed the House appropriating $10,000,000 to compensate slave-owners in that State, if abolition of slavery should be made part of its organic law. The Senate made the sum $15,000,000 and returned the bill to the House for concurrence. But the representatives from Missouri were tireless in their hostility to the measure, and finally killed it by parliamentary expedients of delay. This was a great disappointment to Mr. Lincoln. While the measure was pending he argued strenuously with leading Missourians to induce them to put their State in the lead in what he hoped would then become a procession of slave States. But these gentlemen seemed to fear that, if they should take United States bonds in payment, they might awake some morning in these troublous times to find their promiser a bankrupt or a repudiationist. On the other hand, such was the force of habit that a slave seemed to them very tangible property. Mr. Lincoln shrewdly suggested that, amid present conditions, "_bonds_ were better than _bondsmen_," and "two-legged property" was a very bad kind to hold. Time proved him to be entirely right; but for the present his argument, entreaty, and humor were all alike useless. Missouri would have nothing to do with "compensated emancipation;" and since she was regarded as a test case, the experiment was not tried elsewhere. So it came to pass afterward that the slaveholders parted with their slaves for nothing instead of exchanging them for the six per cent. bonds of the United States. * * * * *