THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to each State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.”
The announcement was received by the whole assemblage with transports of joy. Everybody felt that, although the resolution proposed was in a high degree cautious and conservative, yet it indicated the true relation between the Civil War and slavery. Here the abolishment of slavery with compensation was distinctly pointed out as a measure of peace and reunion. If the Slave States rejected it, they would have to bear the consequences. In the argument accompanying the draft of the resolution the President said: “In my judgment, gradual, not sudden emancipation, is better for all. Such a proposition on the part of the government sets up no claim of a right by Federal authority to interfere with slavery within State limits, referring, as it does, the absolute control of the subject in each case to the State and its people immediately interested. In the annual message last December, I thought fit to say: ‘The Union must be preserved; and hence, all indispensable means must be employed.’ I said this, not hastily, but deliberately. War has been made, and continues to be, an indispensable means to this end. A practical reacknowledgment of the national authority would render the war unnecessary, and it would at once cease. If, however, resistance continues, the war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the incidents which may attend and all the ruin which may follow it. Such as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency towards ending the struggle, must and will come.”
The possibilities, or rather the probabilities, of the future
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