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cease, but dissension, suspicion, and estrangement be eradicated.
Filled with such thoughts and purposes, he spent the day after his return from Hampton Roads in considering and perfecting a new proposal, designed as a peace offering to the States in rebellion.
On the evening of February 5, 1865, he called his cabinet together, and read to them the draft of a joint resolution and proclamation embodying this idea, offering the Southern States four hundred million dollars, or a sum equal to the cost of the war for two hundred days, on condition that hostilities cease by the first of April, 1865; to be paid in six per cent. government bonds, pro rata on their slave populations as shown by the census of 1860-one half on April I, the other half only upon condition that the Thirteenth Amendment be ratified by a requisite number of States before July I, 1865.
It turned out that he was more humane and liberal than his constitutional advisers.
The indorsement in his own handwriting on the manuscript draft records the result of his appeal and suggestion:
With the words, “You are all opposed to me,” sadly uttered, the President folded up the paper and ceased the discussion.
The formal inauguration of Mr. Lincoln for his second presidential term took place at the appointed time, March 4, 1865.
There is little variation in the simple but impressive pageantry with which the official ceremony is celebrated.
The principal novelty commented
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New York. The Century Corp. 1919. Published October 1902.
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