But, consistently with their usual course, they went to the House of Representatives, fresh from the Presidential presence, and, with their ears still ringing with the common-sense utterances of the President, half of them voted against the Resolution, while the other half refrained from voting at all. And their opposition to this wise and moderate proposition was mainly based upon the idea that it carried with it a threat—a covert threat.

It certainly was a warning, taking it in connection with the balance of the Message, but a very wise and timely one.

These loyal Border-State men, however, could not see its wisdom, and at a full meeting held upon the subject decided to oppose it, as they afterward did. Its conciliatory spirit they could not comprehend; the kindly, temperate warning, they would not heed. The most moderate of them all,—[Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky.]—in the most moderate of his utterances, could not bring himself to the belief that this Resolution was "a measure exactly suited to the times."

[And such was the fatuity existing among the Slave-holders of the Border States, that not one of those Slave States had wisdom enough to take the liberal offer thus made by the General Government, of compensation. They afterward found their Slaves freed without compensation.]

So, also, one month later, (April 11, 1862), when the Senate Bill proposing Emancipation in the District of Columbia, was before the House, the same spokesman and leader of the loyal Border-State men opposed it strenuously as not being suited to the times. For, he persuasively protested: "I do not say that you have not the power; but would not that power be, at such a time as this, most unwisely and indiscreetly exercised. That is the point. Of all the times when an attempt was ever made to carry this measure, is not this the most inauspicious? Is it not a time when the measure is most likely to produce danger and mischief to the Country at large? So it seems to me."

It was not now, nor would it ever be, the time, to pass this, or any other measure, touching the Institution of Slavery, likely to benefit that Union to which these men professed such love and loyalty.

Their opposition, however, to the march of events, was of little avail—even when backed, as was almost invariably the case, by the other Democratic votes from the Free States. The opposition was obstructive, but not effectual. For this reason it was perhaps the more irritating to the Republicans, who were anxious to put Slavery where their great leader, Mr. Lincoln, had long before said it should be placed—"in course of ultimate extinction."

This very irritation, however, only served to press such Anti-Slavery Measures more rapidly forward. By the 19th of June, 1862, a Bill "to secure Freedom to all persons within the Territories of the United States"—after a more strenuous fight against it than ever, on the part of Loyal and Copperhead Democrats, both from the Border and Free States,—had passed Congress, and been approved by President Lincoln. It provided, in just so many words, "That, from and after the passage of this Act, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the Territories of the United States now existing, or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."

Here, then, at last, was the great end and aim, with which Mr. Lincoln and the Republican Party started out, accomplished. To repeat his phrase, Slavery was certainly now in course of ultimate extinction.

But since that doctrine had been first enunciated by Mr. Lincoln, events had changed the aspect of things. War had broken out, and the Slaves of those engaged in armed Rebellion against the authority of the United States Government, had been actually employed, as we have seen, on Rebel works and fortifications whose guns were trailed upon the Armies of the Union.