thin it, has been received.
Desirous as I am that emancipation shall be adopted by Missouri, and
believing as I do that gradual can be made better than immediate for
both black and white, except when military necessity changes the case,
my impulse is to say that such protection would be given. I cannot know
exactly what shape an act of emancipation may take. If the period from
the initiation to the final end should be comparatively short, and the
act should prevent persons being sold during that period into more
lasting slavery, the whole would be easier. I do not wish to pledge the
general government to the affirmative support of even temporary slavery
beyond what can be fairly claimed under the Constitution. I suppose,
however, this is not desired, but that it is desired for the military
force of the United States, while in Missouri, to not be used in
subverting the temporarily reserved legal rights in slaves during the
progress of emancipation. This I would desire also."

Proceeding with its work, the old State convention, which had hitherto
made a most honorable record, neglected a great opportunity. It indeed
adopted an ordinance of gradual emancipation on July 1, 1863, but of
such an uncertain and dilatory character, that public opinion in the
State promptly rejected it. By the death of the provisional governor on
January 31, 1864, the conservative party of Missouri lost its most
trusted leader, and thereafter the radicals succeeded to the political
power of the State. At the presidential election of 1864, that party
chose a new State convention, which met in St. Louis on January 6, 1865,
and on the sixth day of its session (January 11) formally adopted an
ordinance of immediate emancipation.

Maryland, like Missouri, had no need of reconstruction. Except for the
Baltimore riot and the arrest of her secession legislature during the
first year of the war, her State government continued its regular
functions. But a strong popular undercurrent of virulent secession
sympathy among a considerable minority of her inhabitants was only held
in check by the military power of the Union, and for two years
emancipation found no favor in the public opinion of the State. Her
representatives, like those of most other border States, coldly refused
President Lincoln's earnest plea to accept compensated abolishment; and
a bill in Congress to give Maryland ten million dollars for that object
was at once blighted by the declaration