General Banks and Governor Hahn issued proclamations calling an election for delegates to a State Convention for the revision and amendment of the State Constitution. The electiontook place on the 28th of March. Out of one hundred and fifty delegates to which the whole State was entitled, ninetyeight were elected. The convention met at New Orleans on the 6th of April, and on the 11th of May, by a vote of seventy, to sixteen, it adopted a clause of the New Constitution by which slavery was prohibited forever in that State.

The constitution was on the 5th of September 1864, submitted to a vote of the people, and adopted by a vote of 6,836 to 1,566. An election was held and officers elected under the New Constitution. The Legislature elected Senators to the United States Senate, and Presidential electors. But as Congress did not admit the members and Senators elect for Louisiana, the Presidential votes of the State in 1864, were not counted.

It will be remembered that Andrew Johnson was on the 3d of March 1862, appointed Provisional Governor of Tennessee by the President. It will also be remembered that Mr. Lincoln was induced by Mr. Johnson and others, not to include the State of Tennessee in the Proclamation of Emancipation. The provisional Governor was authorized to exercise "such powers as might be necessary and proper, to enable the loyal people of Tennessee to present such a republican form of government as will entitle the State to the guarantee of the United States thereof.

A convention of the Union people of Tennessee was called by the Provisional Governor, and met on the 8th of Januuary 1865, at the Capital in Nashville. The convention proposed among other things, the following most important change in the constitution of the State:

"Section 1. That slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, are hereby forever abolished and prohibited throughout the State. "Sec. 2. The Legislature shall make no law recognizing property in man."

On the 26th day of January 1865, Governor Andrew Johnson issued his proclamation, reciting the proceedings of the Convention-by which certain amendments to the Constitution were passed, and submitted to the people for ratification or rejection, providing for a vote of the loyal people of Tennessee and those only upon the amendment. Governor Johnson earnestly recommended the loyal people to come forward and ratify and confirm the action of said Convention: "Strike down," said he, "at one blow, the institution of slavery-remove the disturbing element from your midst, and by united action restore the State to its ancient moorings again, and you may confidently expect the speedy return of peace, happiness and prosperity."

The election was held on the 22d of February 1865, and on the 26th of February, the Governor announced by proclamation that Tennessee had adopted the proposed amendments, and that she had by her own voluntary act, become a free State. "By this one solemn act at the ballot box," said he, "the shackles have been stricken from the limbs of two hundred and seventy-five thousand slaves in the state. The unjust distinction in society fostered by an arrogant aristocracy, based upon human bondage, has been overthrown, and our whole social system reconstructed on the basis of honest industry and personal worth."

He then in eloquent terms, pointed out the future greatness of that State, based upon free labor and intelligence. In this great revolution in Tennessee, Andrew Johnson, William G. Brownlow, Horace Maynard and James S. Fowler were among the prominent leaders.

To the bold leadership, and the unrivalled eloquence of Henry Winter Davis, is Maryland largely indebted for her position as a free State. He inaugurated the movement and led it forward to final success. He had able and eloquent assistants, among whom were Creswell and Thomas, Webster and Bond, but he was their acknowledged and natural leader. The emancipation movement was organized early in 1863; from that time until its triumph, Davis, was ubiquitous, and

* See House Doc. No. 55, 1st Sess, 39th Congress, containing a history of recon struction in Tennessee.

with a voice of eloquence, such only as liberty can inspire, and with a pen which scattered "thoughts that breathe," and "words that burn," he traversed the State, pleading for universal emancipation. In the beginning his followers were few, but they constantly and rapidly increased until they revolutionized the State.

Maryland had turned a deaf ear to the earnest entreaties of Lincoln in favor of gradual and compensated emancipation. This new movement, had the President's earnest sympathy, and his active coöperation. It would accomplish more summarily than he had proposed, the great end of abolition. At the election of 1863, the emancipation party, had elected a majority of the Legislature. In January, 1864, a resolution was adopted, declaring that the true interests of Maryland demand that the policy of emancipation should be immediately inaugurated, and that the Legislature would submit to the people a call for a convention. A bill, calling a convention, was accordingly passed. The people by a majority of more than 12,000 voted in favor of the convention. Delegates were elected of which sixty-one were in favor of, and thirty-five opposed to emancipation.

The Constitution framed by this convention contained two most important changes.

ARTICLE 4, provided, "That, the Constitution of the United States, and the laws made in pursuance thereof, being the supreme law of the land, every citizen of this State owes a paramount allegiance to the Constitution and Government of the United States, and is not bound by any law or ordinance of this State in contravention or subversion thereof." ARTICLE 23, provided, "That hereafter, in this State, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; and all persons held to service or labor as slaves are hereby declared free." *

Thus, the organic law of the State was made expressly to declare that the citizen owed paramount allegiance to the Republic, and not to a local division of it. This destroyed the germ of secession-the other article extirpated slavery.

* Appleton's Encyclopedia, 1864.

This constitution was submitted to the vote of the people on the 12th and 13th of October, 1864.

During the canvass, Mr. Lincoln addressed a letter to the people of Maryland, earnestly urging the adoption of this Constitution, and reiterating his often expressed desire that all men should be free.

The Constitution was adopted by a majority of the people, and Maryland, an old patriotic and noble State, of Revolutionary fame, took her position among the free States. This result was most gratifying to the loyal people of the United States, and to none more so, than to the President. He regarded it as more important than a battle gained; indeed he thought it decisive of the war.

At the close of the struggle, on the bright autumnal evening of the 19th of October, 1864, a crowd of joyous Marylanders came with music, banners, and exulting cheers, to the White House to exchange congratulations with the President on the result. He said to them, among other things, "most heartily do I congratulate you, and Maryland, and the Nation, upon this event! I regret that it did not occur two years which I am sure would have saved to the Nation more money than would have met all the private loss incident to the measure. But it has come at last, and I sincerely hope its friends may fully realize all their anticipations of good from it, and that its opponents may, by its effects, be agreeably and profitably disappointed."

sooner,

The seeds of emancipation in Missouri had been sown by Benton, the Blairs, B. Gratz Brown, and others.

At the time of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, the city of St. Louis was a free-soil city, and elected as its Representative to Congress, F. P. Blair, Jr., who was then the bold and unflinching, leader of the anti-slavery party of Missouri. The energy with which he had carried on the conflict against the slaveholders, had made him an object of peculiar interest throughout the free States, and no young man in the Republic was regarded as having brighter political prospects. On the opening of the Thirty-seventh Congress, he was largely supported for Speaker. He was a great favorite with Mr. Lincoln, who had watched with deep inter

est and gratification the gallant and successful fight he had made against slaveholders in Missouri. His services to the anti-slavery cause, and his most efficient services to the country in thwarting the schemes of the conspirators in taking Missouri "out of the Union," as they termed secession, endeared him to Mr. Lincoln, who stood by him and the Blair family, long after they became unpopular, with a tenacity and firmness which would not give them up, until the Union party, speaking through its National Convention, constrained the retirement of Montgomery -Blair from his Cabinet.

St. Louis, and some other portions of Missouri, were largely settled by intelligent and liberty loving Germans who came from Europe with intense hostility to slavery in every form. They rendered powerful aid to the emancipation movement. The brief administration of Fremont in Missouri contributed to the same result.

A convention was held in this State in 1863, which decided in favor of gradual, instead of immediate emancipation. This was not satisfactory to the people. The car of progress, in favor of universal liberty, was now under full headway, and the radicals who constituted a majority of the loyal people demanded immediate and unconditional emancipation. They demanded a new convention, and an election to determine whether one should be held, was had on the 8th of November, 1864. The people decided by the overwhelming majority of 37,793, in a vote of 89,215, in favor of a convention, and three-fourths of the members elected were of the radical anti-slavery party.

The convention met on the 6th of January, 1865, at St. Louis, and on the 11th, the following ordinance was reported:

"Be it ordained by the people of the State of Missouri in convention assembled, That hereafter in this State, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, and all persons held to service or labor as slaves, are hereby declared free."

After debate, the ordinance was adopted by a vote of 59 ayes, to noes 4, and then the following proceedings took place.