"A few of our number voted for the Resolution recommended by your Message of the 6th of March last, the greater portion of us did not, and we will briefly state the prominent reasons which influenced our action.
"In the first place, it proposed a radical change of our social system, and was hurried through both Houses with undue haste, without reasonable time for consideration and debate, and with no time at all for consultation with our constituents, whose interests it deeply involved. It seemed like an interference by this Government with a question which peculiarly and exclusively belonged to our respective States, on which they had not sought advice or solicited aid.
"Many of us doubted the Constitutional power of this Government to make appropriations of money for the object designated, and all of us thought our finances were in no condition to bear the immense outlay which its adoption and faithful execution would impose upon the National Treasury. If we pause but a moment to think of the debt its acceptance would have entailed, we are appalled by its magnitude. The proposition was addressed to all the States, and embraced the whole number of Slaves.
"According to the census of 1860 there were then nearly four million Slaves in the Country; from natural increase they exceed that number now. At even the low average of $300, the price fixed by the Emancipation Act for the Slaves of this District, and greatly below their real worth, their value runs up to the enormous sum of $1,200,000,000; and if to that we add the cost of deportation and colonization, at $100 each, which is but a fraction more than is actually paid—by the Maryland Colonization Society, we have $400,000,000 more.
"We were not willing to impose a tax on our people sufficient to pay the interest on that sum, in addition to the vast and daily increasing debt already fixed upon them by exigencies of the War, and if we had been willing, the Country could not bear it. Stated in this form the proposition is nothing less than the deportation from the Country of $1,600,000,000 worth of producing labor, and the substitution, in its place, of an interest-bearing debt of the same amount.
"But, if we are told that it was expected that only the States we represent would accept the proposition, we respectfully submit that even then it involves a sum too great for the financial ability of this Government at this time. According to the census of 1860:
| Slaves | ||
| Kentucky had | 225,490 | |
| Maryland | 87,188 | |
| Virginia | 490,887 | |
| Delaware | 1,798 | |
| Missouri | 114,965 | |
| Tennessee | 275,784 | |
| Making in the whole | 1,196,112 | |
| At the same rate of valuation these would | ||
| amount to | $358,933,500 | |
| Add for deportation and colonization $100 each | ||
| $118,244,533 | ||
| And we have the | ||
| enormous sum of | $478,038,133 |
"We did not feel that we should be justified in voting for a measure which, if carried out, would add this vast amount to our public debt at a moment when the Treasury was reeling under the enormous expenditure of the War.
"Again, it seemed to us that this Resolution was but the annunciation of a sentiment which could not or was not likely to be reduced to an actual tangible proposition. No movement was then made to provide and appropriate the funds required to carry it into effect; and we were not encouraged to believe that funds would be provided. And our belief has been fully justified by subsequent events.
"Not to mention other circumstances, it is quite sufficient for our purpose to bring to your notice the fact that, while this resolution was under consideration in the Senate, our colleague, the Senator from Kentucky, moved an amendment appropriating $500,000 to the object therein designated, and it was voted down with great unanimity.