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and of the 'dumb toiling millions bound and sold.' A truce with slavery is a defeat for the Nation. A compromise with slavery is a present of disaster and dishonor, and a future of anarchy and blood. Mercy to slavery, is a crime against liberty. The death of slavery is the annihilation of the rebellion, the unity of the Republic, the life of the Nation, the harmonious development of republican institutions, the repose, culture, and renown of the people.* "Engraving on every rood of the vast territories of the Republic, on the magnificent forests and prairies, valleys and mountains, in the central regions of the continent, in letters of light, slavery shall be forever prohibited,'obliterating slavery and annulling the slave code in the Capital of the Nation-decreeing under the war powers more than three million bondmen in the rebel States, 'thenceforward and forever free,'proclaiming the emancipation of the slave by the fiat of the Nation the instant he writes his name on the muster roll of the defenders of the Republic, has riven and shivered the slave system into broken and dismembered fragments; and that huge and ghastly system now lies prostrate in the convulsive throes of dissolution. National legislation, Executive action, judicial decision may still further wound and weaken, degrade and humiliate the now impotent system that once in the pride of power, gave law to Republican America.†

"But, sir, the crowning act in this series of acts, for the restriction and extinction of slavery in America, is this proposed amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the existence of slavery forevermore in the Republic of the United States. If this amendment shall be incorporated by the will of the Nation into the Constitution of the United States, it will obliterate the last lingering vestiges of the slave system; its chattelizing, degrading, and bloody codes; its dark, malignant, barbarizing spirit; all it was and is, everything connected with it, or pertaining to it, from the face of the Nation it has scarred with moral desolation, from the bosom of the country it has reddened with the blood, and strewn with the graves of patriotism. The incorporation of this amendment into the organic law of the Nation, will make impossible forevermore, the reappearing of the discarded slave system, and the returning of the despotism of the slavemaster's domination.

The debate was continued on the 30th of March, by a violent speech of Senator Davis of Kentucky, against the amendment; and on the 31st, by a still more violent speech by Mr.

* Congressional Globe, Vol. 51, p. 1323-24. + Congressional Globe, Vol. 51, p. 1324.

Saulsbury, in opposition. New Hampshire was heard in reply through the eloquent voice of Senator Clark, in favor of the resolutions. Then the young State of Wisconsin, spoke through Senator Howe, for the amendment.

On the 5th of April, a memorable speech in favor of the amendment was made by Reverdy Johnson, Senator from Maryland. A Senator from a State just throwing off the burden of slavery; a lawyer of great eminence; an old and experienced statesman; the cotemporary and associate of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun. His speech attracted marked attention in the Senate and throughout the country. He commenced by calling attention to the opinions in regard to slavery entertained by those who accomplished the Revolution. On this point he says:

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"There was a period in our own time when there was but one opinion upon the question of right, or almost but one opinion upon that question. The men who fought through the Revolution, those who survived its peril and shared in its glory, and who were called to the Convention by which the Constitution of the United States was drafted and recommended to the adoption of the American people, almost without exception, thought that slavery was not only an evil, to any people among whom it might exist, but that it was an evil of the highest character, which it was the duty of all christian people if possible, to remove,

because it was a sin as well as an evil.

"I think the history of those times will bear me out in the statement, that if the men by whom that Constitution was framed, and the people by whom it was adopted, had anticipated the times in which we live, they would have provided by constitutional enactment, that that evil and that sin should at some comparatively unremote day be removed. Without recurring to authority, the writings public or private of the men of that day, it is sufficient for my purpose to state what the facts will justify me in saying, that every man of them who largely shared in the dangers of the revolutionary struggle, and who largely participated in the deliberations of the Convention by which the Constitution was adopted, earnestly desired, not only upon grounds of political economy, not only upon reasons material in their character, but upon grounds of morality and religion, that sooner or later the institution should terminate."

* Congressional Globe, Vol. 51, p. 1419.

He thus expresses his emphatic concurrence with Jefferson, in regard to the injustice of slavery: *

"I concurred, and concur still, in the judgment of the great apostle of American liberty, the author of that Declaration which is to live through all time as the Magna Charta of human rights, that in a contest between the slave to throw off his thralldom, and the master who holds him to it, the God of justice could take no part in favor of the latter. And as I have said to the Senate already, and alluded to it on a former occasion, my opinion upon the institution is not now for the first time announced."

He charges that the election of Mr. Lincoln, so far from being the cause of the rebellion, was hailed with joy by the conspirators, as furnishing an occasion for the exccution of their long concocted conspiracy:†

"The present incumbent of the Presidential Chair, was elected, elected by a sectional vote, and the moment the news reached Charleston where some of the leading conspirators were, and here in this Chamber where others were to be found, it was hailed not with regret but with delight. Why? Because, as they thought, it would enable them to drive the South to madness, by appealing to the danger in which such an event involved this institution, which the people were made to believe was so essential to their power and to their happiness, and that will be repeated over and over again, just as long as the institution is suffered to remain. Terminate it, and the wit of man will, as I think, be unable to devise any other topic upon which we can be involved in a fratricidal strife. God and nature, judging by the history of the past, intend us to be one. Our unity is written in the mountains and rivers in which we all have an interest. The very difference of climate render each important to the other and alike important. That mighty horde which from time to time have gone from the Atlantic, imbued with all the principles of human freedom which animated their fathers in running the perils of the mighty deep, and seeking liberty here, are now there, and as they have said, they will continue to say, until time shall be no more: 'We mean that the Government in future shall be as in the past, one, an example of human freedom for the light and example of the world, and illustrating in the blessings and the happiness it confers, the truth of the principles incorporated into the Declaration of Independence, that life and liberty are man's inalienable right.'"

Congressional Globe, Vol. 51, p. 1420.

† Congressional Globe, Vol. 51, p. 1421.

The young and prosperous free-soil State of Iowa, through her distinguished Senator, Harlan, was next heard in favor of the amendment. Mr. Harlan had been a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church; and he discussed with great ability, the violation of morals and Christianity growing out of slavery. He showed that the prohibition of the marital relation was a necessary incident of slavery as it existed in most of the slave States. The abrogation of the conjugal relation among four millions of human beings ought never to be permitted by a Christian people. Slavery abrogated praetically the parental relation; it rendered the slave incapable of acquiring or holding property; its tendency was, to reduce him mentally and morally to the condition of the beast.

Mr. Saulsbury of Delaware, advocated slavery as a divine institution. Then came a characteristic speech from the old anti-slavery leader John P. Hale. He said, "the day he and many others had long wished for, hoped for, striven for, had come. The Nation was now to commence a new life." He called attention to the contrast between the grandeur and sublimity of the truths embraced in the Declaration of Independence, and the degradation and infamy involved in the practical disregard by the Nation, of these truths.

Senator McDougal of California, upon whom did not fall the mantle of the martyred Broderick, but who in his better days was a fine scholar and dialectition, misrepresented the Pacific coast by opposing the amendment.

Senator Henderson of Missouri, announced in clear language, the issue to be, "the Union without slavery, or the acknowledgment of the Southern Confederacy." He announced at the same time, that he was a slaveholder; "but," said he,

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we cannot save the institution if we would, and we ought not if we could." He closed by expressing the hope that the abolition of slavery would be the means of bringing about a lasting peace, upon which National freedom could be built upon National strength, and that from this era, we might date a more perfect National unity.

The Senators from Kentucky opposed vehemently the amendment.

Charles Sumner on behalf of Massachusetts, and of the friends of the amendment, closed the great debate. He showed clearly that slavery found no warrant for its existence in the Constitution, and that it existed in defiance of its principles. Yet he would prohibit it by express enactment. He brought to the discussion his rich stores of historical knowledge-the writings of the poets, historians, and ɛtatesmen of the past. He declared that the amendment would be the cap-stone upon the sublime structure of American liberty.

On the 8th of April, the amendment was adopted in the Senate by ayes 38, noes 6. Those voting in the negative were Davis and Powell of Kentucky, McDougall of California, Hendricks of Indiania, and Saulsbury and Riddle of Delaware. Let us now pass to the consideration of the amendment in the popular branch of Congress.

We have seen, that in the House of Representatives, early in the session, propositions for amending the Constitution, abolishing and prohibiting slavery were introduced. On the 15th of February, 1864, on motion of Mr. Arnold of Illinois, the House adopted the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the Constitution should be so amended, as to abolish slavery in the United States wherever it now exists, and to prohibit its existence in every part thereof, forever." *

This, it is believed, was the first resolution ever adopted in Congress in favor of the entire abolition of slavery. Although it passed by a decided majority, it was doubtful whether the amendment offered, could obtain the two-thirds vote required by the Constitution for its passage.

The very decided vote in its favor in the Senate, the pressure of a constantly increasing public sentiment demanding its passage, it was hoped would carry it through. The President used all the means in his power to secure its success. He personally urged all on whom he could exert an influence, to vote for it. The discussion upon the proposition began on the 31st of May, and it was not finally brought to a vote until the 15th of June. It was opposed by Messrs. Holman of

*Congressional Globe, Vol. 50, p. 659.