The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

238 THE LIFE, PUBLIC SERVICES, AND
ask our people to consider the question of emancipation to save the
Union.
Hon. Horace Mayntrd, of Tennessee, on the 16th of
July submitted to the President his views of the question, in which he thus set forth his appreciation of the
motives which had induced him to make the proposition
in question to the Southern States:
Your whole administration gives the highest assurance that you are
moved, not so much from a desire to see all men everywhere made free,
as from a desire to preserve free institutions for the benefit of men
already free; not to make slaves free men, but to prevent free men from
being made slaves; not to destroy an institution which a portion of us
only consider bad, but to save an institution which we all alike consider
good. I am satisfied that you would not ask from any of your fellowcitizens a sacrifice not in your judgment imperatively required by the
safety of the country. This is the spirit of your appeal, and I respond to
it in the same spirit.
Determined to leave undone nothing which it was in
his power to do to effect the object he had so much at
heart, the President, on the 12th of July, sent in to Congress a Message transmitting the draft of a bill upon the
subject, as follows:Fellow- Citizens of the Senate and House of Representatives:Herewith is the draft of the bill to compensate any State which may
abolish slavery within its limits, the passage of which, substantially as
presented, I respectfully and earnestly recommend.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Be it enacted by the Senate and Housqe of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled:-That whenever the President
of the United States shall be satisfied that any State shall have lawfully
abolished slavery within and throughout such State, either immediately
or gradually, it shall be the duty of the President, assisted by the Secretary of the Treasury, to prepare and deliver to each State an amount of
six per cent. interest-bearing bonds of the United States, equal to the aggregate value at - dollars per head of all the slaves within such State
as reported by the census of 1860; the whole amount for any one State
to be delivered at once, if the abolishment be immediate, or in equal
annual instalmnents, if it be gradual, interest to begin running on each
bond at the time of delivery, and not before.
And be it further enacted, That if any State, having so received any
such bonds, shall at any time afterwards by law reintroduce or tolerate
slavery within its limits, contrary to the act of abolishment upon which
such bonds shall have been received, said bonds so received by said St..it'