It was calculated that it would have only cost the United States 60 days(?) of what it cost to run the War for the North. That would have been true restitution and repatriation. The amount of money, property and lives lost, both Union and Confederate, that would have been saved, had he accepted that compromize, must be laid at Lincoln's feet
Lincoln refusal to accept such a porposal demonstrates that the War wasn't about "freeing the Slaves", It was about subjugating the Southern people. To have accepted such a proposal would have meant that Lincoln would have had to reconized the independence of the Southern people as a seperate and equal nation. Lincoln wasn't about to do that, now was he?