President reads to cabinet meeting at 7 P.M. proposal for joint resolution of Congress whereby payment of $400 million would be distributed among 16 states pro rata on their slave population in return for cessation of all resistance to national authority by April 1, 1865. Cabinet unanimously disapproves. Abraham Lincoln to the Senate and House of Representatives, [5 February 1865], CW, 8:260-61; Seward to Welles, 5 February 1865, Gideon Welles Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.