If they were truly penitent, all was as it
should be. If they were impenitent, he was willing to trust to time to
effect a change of heart. Accordingly he worked out a scheme whereby
Congress should empower him to distribute between the slave States
$400,000,000, in proportion to their respective slave populations, on
condition that "all resistance to the national authority [should] be
abandoned and cease on or before the first day of April next;" one half
the sum to be paid when such resistance should so cease; the other half
whenever, on or before July 1 next, the Thirteenth Amendment should
become valid law. So soon as he should be clothed with authority, he
proposed to issue "a proclamation looking to peace and reunion," in
which he would declare that, upon the conditions stated, he would
exercise this power; that thereupon war should cease and armies be
reduced to a peace basis; that all political offenses should be
pardoned; that all property, except slaves, liable to confiscation or
forfeiture, should be released therefrom (except in cases of intervening
interests of third parties); and that liberality should be recommended
to Congress upon all points not lying within executive control. On the
evening of February 5 he submitted to his cabinet a draft covering these
points. His disappointment may be imagined when he found that not one of
his advisers agreed with him; that his proposition was "unanimously
disapproved.
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