Maryland, New York and West Virginia on the 3rd; Maine and Kansas on the 7th; Massachusetts and Pennsylvania on the 8th; Virginia on the 9th; Ohio and Missouri on the 10th; Indiana and Nevada on the 16th, and so on until before the end of that short month seventeen states had taken action ratifying the amendment. Before the end of the calendar year, on the 18th of December, Secretary Seward, who had remained in the Cabinet after President Lincoln's death, announced by proclamation that twenty-seven states, being three-fourths of the thirty-six states in the nation, had officially ratified the amendment which had thus been made a part of the National Constitution.

It is interesting to note that four slave states-Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Arkansas-reconstructed under President Lincoln's direction and by his authority, were among the twenty-seven states constituting the three-fourths necessary to accomplish that ratification.

The Constitutional Amendment was as oil upon troubled waters in its influence upon the antislavery element of the nation. There were a few of the extreme radicals in Congress who seemed reluctant to forget that they had a chronic grudge against Mr. Lincoln because of his cautious and conservative movements against slavery and his great kindness and forbearance toward those who were in rebellion, but, although their fault-finding inclinations remained with them, they found little of which to complain. There was, however, one exception of which they promptly availed themselves. While the loyal states were all jubilant over the passage of the amendment, and the President's charming response to the serenade of congratulations, without any warning the nation was startled on the morning of February 3rd by the telegraphic announcement that the President was at Fortress Monroe to confer with Confederate commissioners respecting terms of peace. This gave the trouble-makers their last opportunity to pour the vials of wrath upon President Lincoln's devoted head.

A better spirit was shown by the extreme abolitionists, who seemed anxious to forget that they ever were out of harmony with the President and earnestly desired to atone for their past disapproval of the policies by which he had led them, and the nation, to the great antislavery consummation.

On the evening of the 4th of February, when the President had just returned from the Hampton Roads conference, before mentioned, William Lloyd Garrison, the leader and the greatest of the radical abolition element, at a large mass meeting in Boston said: "And to whom is the country more immediately indebted for this vital and saving amendment of the Constitution than, perhaps, to any other man? I believe I may confidently answer-to the humble railsplitter of Illinois-to the Presidential chain-breaker for millions of the oppressed-to Abraham Lincoln! (Immense and long-continued applause, ending with three cheers for the President.) I understand that it was by his wish and influence that that plank was made a part of the Baltimore platform; and taking his position unflinchingly upon that platform, the people have overwhelmingly sustained both him and it, in ushering in the year of jubilee." "

It does not detract from the merit or value of the efforts and achievements of others in securing the passage of this Constitutional Amendment to state that it was Abraham Lincoln who wrote that Article into the organic law of the nation. By his lifelong and consistent opposition to slavery, his clear, logical exposure of its injustice and wrong, his courageous demand for its restriction and "ultimate extinction," his wise and successful guidance of the movements that preceded and prepared the way for its downfall, his Proclamation of Emancipation and his early and hearty espousal of this Amendment, he is entitled to the designation by which he is known in all the world and by which he will evermore be rememberedThe Emancipator!

The Liberator, February 10th, 1865.

PART II