As Lincoln feared, the Border State delegations found his arguments unpersuasive. They balked at the meager sum to be paid for slaves, raised constitutional objections, predicted that a race war would ensue, and warned that Lincoln’s scheme would cause taxes to skyrocket. They also protested that their economies would be ruined and that, if adopted, the plan would make life harder for Unionists in Virginia and Tennessee. (A Missouri Unionist regretted that Lincoln, whom he regarded as “a good & honest man,” had become “a monomaniac” on the slavery issue.) On March 11, D. W. Bartlett, after observing the congressional debates in which these objections were made, remarked that it “is certainly astonishing with what tenacity the border state men cling” to slavery. Prophetically, he speculated that the “whole scheme will prove a failure, for no border state unless it be Delaware will accept the offer.” John W. Forney found their opposition “inexplicable,” for they failed to “see that, while the ultra Republicans swallowed the President’s theory with reluctance, the sentiment which actuated it was a sentiment of devoted attachment” to the Border State men. The Louisville Journal warned that Border State intransigence would drive Lincoln into the arms of the Radicals.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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