"There is one other idea in your address we feel called on to notice.
After stating the fact of your repudiation of General Hunter's
Proclamation, you add:
"'Yet, in repudiating it, I gave dissatisfaction, if not offense, to
many whose support the Country cannot afford to lose. And this is not
the end of it. The pressure in this direction is still upon me and is
increasing. By conceding what I now ask, you can relieve me, and, much
more, can relieve the Country, in this important point,'
"We have anxiously looked into this passage to discover its true import,
but we are yet in painful uncertainty. How can we, by conceding what
you now ask, relieve you and the Country from the increasing pressure to
which you refer? We will not allow ourselves to think that the
proposition is, that we consent to give up Slavery, to the end that the
Hunter proclamation may be let loose on the Southern people, for it is
too well known that we would not be parties to any such measure, and we
have too much respect for you to imagine you would propose it.
"Can it mean that by sacrificing our interest in Slavery we appease the
spirit that controls that pressure, cause it to be withdrawn, and rid
the Country of the pestilent agitation of the Slavery question? We are
forbidden so to think, for that spirit would not be satisfied with the
liberation of 100,000 Slaves, and cease its agitation while 3,000,000
remain in bondage.
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