e eleventh hour a copy was handed to Mr. Lincoln, to accompany his
message; and then, for the first time, he saw these radical passages.
Instantly he directed that all the postmasters, to whose offices the
printed copies had been sent on their way to the newspaper editors,
should be ordered at once to return these copies to the secretary. He
then ordered the secretary to make a change, equivalent to an omission,
of this inflammatory paragraph. After this emasculation the paragraph
only stated that "slaves who were abandoned by their owners on the
advance of our troops" should not be returned to the enemy.

When the Thirty-seventh Congress came together for the regular session,
December 2, 1861, anti-slavery sentiment had made a visible advance.
President Lincoln, in his message, advised recognizing the independence
of the negro states of Hayti and Liberia. He declared that he had been
anxious that the "inevitable conflict should not degenerate into a
violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle," and that he had,
therefore, "thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union
prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part." Referring
to his enforcement of the law of August 6, he said: "The Union must be
preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed." The
shadow which pro-slavery men saw cast by these words was very slightly,
if at all, lightened by an admission which accompanied it,--that "we
should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures,
which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable."
Further he said that already, by the operation of the Act of August 6,
numbers of persons had been liberated, had become dependent on the
United States, and must be provided for. He anticipated that some of the
States might pass similar laws for their own benefit; in which case he
recommended Congress to "provide for accepting such persons from such
States, according to some mode of valuation, in lieu, _pro tanto_, of
direct taxes, or upon some other plan to be agreed on." He desired that
these negroes, being "at once deemed free," should be colonized in some
"climate congenial to them," and he wished an appropriation for
acquiring territory for this purpose. Thus he indicated with sufficient
clearness the three cardinal points of his own theory for emancipation:
voluntary action of the individual slave States by the exercise of their
own sovereign power; compens