Only a few months later he issued his first proclamation of
emancipation; but he did not do so until convinced that he must
do this in order to put down the rebellion. Long ago he had
considered and in his own mind adopted a plan of dealing with the
slavery question--the simple, easy plan which, while a member of
Congress, he had proposed for the District of Columbia--that on
condition of the slave-owners voluntarily giving up their slaves,
they should be paid a fair price for them by the Federal
government. Delaware was a slave State, and seemed an excellent
place in which to try this experiment of "compensated
emancipation," as it was called; for there were, all told, only
1798 slaves left in the State. Without any public announcement of
his purpose he offered to the citizens of Delaware, through their
representative in Congress, four hundred dollars for each of
these slaves, the payment to be made, not all at once, but
yearly, during a period of thirty-one years. He believed that if
Delaware could be induced to accept this offer, Maryland might
follow her example, and that afterward other States would allow
themselves to be led along the same easy way. The Delaware House
of Representatives voted in favor of the proposition, but five of
the nine members of the Delaware senate scornfully repelled the
"abolition bribe," as they chose to call it, and the project
withered in the bud.
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