MATH EXTRA CREDIT #2

THIS JUST IN!

Who: President Lincoln, States

What: Civil War Emancipation Letters

Where: Rochester, New York

When: barely a year in to the Civil War

Why: to end the Civil War

Found in the University of Rochester's archives was 72 letters personally written by President Lincoln, along with 215 other letters from political and military leaders. Vice President Andrew Johnson and General Ulysses S. Grant had also written letters to Lincoln, which is also included on the University of Rochester's website. Among the letters was one sent to Illinois Senator James A. McDougall written on March 14, 1862. In this letter Lincoln made a proposal of his "emancipation with compensation". What this means is that Lincoln was willing to cough up $719, 200, $400 for each of the 1,798 slaves in Delaware. This is added to the war costs of 2 million dollars a day. Then President Lincoln would have to buy the freedom of an estimated 432,622 slaves in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and Washington, D.C. all together would cost $173,048,800 which is almost exactly the same as the estimated $174 million needs to keep the war going for only 87 days. But this proposal never went farther than the drawing board. Then, six months later President Lincoln made the famous speech-the Emancipation Proclamation.

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