Lincoln’s Abolitionist Wedge

(NYTimes) ... Three days later, Lincoln wrote to Henry J. Raymond, the editor of The New York Times, pointing out that “one half-day’s cost of this war would pay for all the slaves in Delaware, at four hundred dollars per head.” Indeed, “eighty-seven days cost of this war would pay for all in Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Kentucky and Missouri at the same price.” The Times subsequently editorialized that the words of Lincoln’s message “will echo round the globe. They will recover us the respect once felt for us in the Old World. In dealing with this vexed subject we think he has hit the happy mean upon which all parties in the North and all loyalists in the South can unite.” Continued