CW, 2:20–22
At the close of 1848 when Abraham Lincoln returned to Congress after campaigning for the presidency of Zachary Taylor, some two thousand slaves lived in the District of Columbia. Congressmen like John Gorham Palfrey, a Free Soiler from Massachusetts, and Daniel Gott, a New York Whig, lamented that one could see the warehouse of the nation’s largest slave trader standing in the shadow of the Capitol. To help repair the nation’s image, the two men often presented bills to abolish slavery in the federal district. Lincoln, on the other hand, consistently voted against such resolutions, despite his personal distaste for the sight of chained humans, fearing that such a measure would agitate Southern Whigs and divide his party. In an effort to maintain party unity, Lincoln prepared a compromise proposal, which met with the approval of only a few antislavery congressmen. A critical element of the new measure, which had been part of his 1837 Illinois “protest,” remained Lincoln’s insistence that nothing regarding the institution of slavery could be done without the approval of whites living there, despite his belief that Congress possessed the power to legislate in all matters regarding the District. His proposal offended several antislavery congressmen who opposed legitimizing the institution of slavery by offering federal dollars to compensate slaveowners for the freedom of their “property.” Southerners, on the other hand, rallied against Lincoln’s bill, seeing it as a covert step toward abolishing slavery nationwide. On January 13, Lincoln stated that he intended to introduce the bill himself, but found himself “abandoned by [his] former backers” and, “having little personal influence,” dropped the measure. Congress would not abolish slavery in the District until April 16, 1862, with Lincoln still urging colonization for the former slaves and compensation to their owners.
Slave Market of America. Broadside, American Anti-Slavery Society, New York, 1836. Early antislavery effort to promote the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
. . . That the Committee on the District of Columbia be instructed to report a bill in substance as follows, to wit:
Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled: That no person not now within the District of Columbia, nor now owned by any person or persons now resident within it, nor hereafter born within it, shall ever be held in slavery within said District.
Section 2. That no person now within said District, or now owned by any person, or persons now resident within the same, or hereafter born within it, shall ever be held in slavery without the limits of said District: Provided, that officers of the government of the United States, being citizens of the slave-holding states, coming into said District on public business, and remaining only so long as may be reasonably necessary for that object, may be attended into, and out of, said District, and while there, by the necessary servants of themselves and their families, without their right to hold such servants in service, being thereby impaired.
Section 3. That all children born of slave mothers within said District on, or after the first day of January in the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and fifty shall be free; but shall be reasonably supported and educated, by the respective owners of their mothers or by their heirs or representatives, and shall owe reasonable service, as apprentices, to such owners, heirs and representatives until they respectively arrive at the age of ——— years when they shall be entirely free; and the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to make all suitable and necessary provisions for enforcing obedience to this section, on the part of both masters and apprentices.
Section 4. That all persons now within said District lawfully held as slaves, or now owned by any person or persons now resident within said District, shall remain such, at the will of their respective owners, their heirs and legal representatives: Provided that any such owner, or his legal representative, may at any time receive from the treasury of the United States the full value of his or her slave, of the class in this section mentioned, upon which such slave shall be forthwith and forever free: and provided further that the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury shall be a board for determining the value of such slaves as their owners may desire to emancipate under this section; and whose duty it shall be to hold a session for the purpose, on the first monday of each calendar month; to receive all applications; and, on satisfactory evidence in each case, that the person presented for valuation, is a slave, and of the class in this section mentioned, and is owned by the applicant, shall value such slave at his or her full cash value, and give to the applicant an order on the treasury for the amount; and also to such slave a certificate of freedom.
Section 5[.] That the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to provide active and efficient means to arrest, and deliver up to their owners, all fugitive slaves escaping into said District.
Section 6[.] That the election officers within said District of Columbia, are hereby empowered and required to open polls at all the usual places of holding elections, on the first monday of April next, and receive the vote of every free white male citizen above the age of twentyone years, having resided within said District for the period of one year or more next preceding the time of such voting, for, or against this act; to proceed, in taking said votes, in all respects not herein specified, as at elections under the municipal laws; and, with as little delay as possible, to transmit correct statements of the votes so cast to the President of the United States. And it shall be the duty of the President to canvass said votes immediately, and, if a majority of them be found to be for this act, to forthwith issue his proclamation giving notice of the fact; and this act shall only be in full force and effect on, and after the day of such proclamation.
Section 7. That involuntary servitude for the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall in no wise be prohibited by this act.
Section 8. That for all the purposes of this act the jurisdictional limits of Washington are extended to all parts of the District of Columbia not now included within the present limits of Georgetown.
Mr. Lincoln then said, that he was authorized to say, that of about fifteen of the leading citizens of the District of Columbia to whom this proposition had been submitted, there was not one but who approved of the adoption of such a proposition. He did not wish to be misunderstood. He did not know whether or not they would vote for this bill on the first Monday of April; but he repeated, that out of fifteen persons to whom it had been submitted, he had authority to say that every one of them desired that some proposition like this should pass.