I think it would be better for Virginia if she could get rid of them. That is no new opinion with me. I have always thought so, and have always been in favor of emancipation - gradual emancipation.

Testimony to the Joint Congressional Committee on Reconstruction (17 February 1866) responding to a question on relocating freed slaves to other states as quoted in Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction at the First Session Thirty-Ninth Congress (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1866), pp. 135-6.