How much better for you as seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out and buy out that without which the war could never have been, than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one another's throats!
In an appeal to border states, Lincoln argues for compensated emancipation as a pragmatic way to end the war and save lives and money.
Share
More from Abraham Lincoln
If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.
I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it.
I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper.
If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything.
Other voices in this conversation
