Compensation
President Lincoln advocated that slave owners be compensated for emancipated slaves. On March 6, 1862 President Lincoln in a message to the U.S. Congress stated that emancipating slaves would create economic "inconveniences" and justified compensation to the slave owners. The resolution was adopted by Congress, however, the Southern States refused to comply. On July 12, 1862 President Lincoln in a conference with Congressmen from Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri encouraged their respective states to adopt emancipation legislation that gave compensation to the slave owners. On July 14, 1862 President Lincoln sent a bill to Congress that allowed the Treasury to issue bonds at 6% interest to states for slave emancipation compensation to the slave owners. The bill was never voted on by Congress. At the Hampton Roads Conference in 1865, Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander H. Stephens stated that President Lincoln was in favor of a "fair indemnity", possibly $400,000,000, in compensation for emancipated slaves.
Read more about this topic: Abraham Lincoln And Slavery
Famous quotes containing the word compensation:
“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Many old people receive pensions for no other reason, it seems to me, but as a compensation for having lived a long time ago.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)