After being made President, the question of colonization arose again. Large numbers of slaves in the Confederate States not only became actually free by escape and capture but also legally free through the operation of the confiscation acts. In this new condition, their protection and care was to a considerable extent thrown upon the government. To solve this problem Lincoln decided upon a plan of compensated emancipation which would affect the liberation of slaves in the border States, and he further considered the future of the recently emancipated slaves and those to be freed.[8] Taking up this question in his first annual message, he said: "It might be well to consider, too, whether the free colored people already in the United States could not so far as individuals may desire be included in such colonization," (meaning the colonization of certain persons who were held by legal claims to the labor and service of certain other persons, and by the act of confiscating property used for insurrectory purposes had become free, their claims being forfeited). "To carry out the plan of colonization may involve the acquiring of territory, and also the appropriation of money beyond that to be expended in the territorial acquisition. Having practiced the acquisition of territory for nearly sixty years, the question of constitutional power to do so is no longer an open one to us.... On this whole proposition, including the appropriation of money with the acquisition of territory, does not the expediency amount to absolute necessity--that without which the government itself cannot be perpetuated?"[9]