 The Southerners proposed the Union recognition of the Confederacy, a joint Union-Confederate attack on Mexico to oust dictator Maximilian I, and an alternative subordinate status of servitude for blacks rather than slavery.Lincoln flatly rejected recognition of the Confederacy, and said that the slaves covered by his Emancipation Proclamation would not be re-enslaved.He said that the Union states were about to pass the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery.