1864] The Thirteenth Amendment proposed 599 the conduct of the war, and turned to him with great confidence as the fittest man to nominate for the next presidential term, both on account of his remarkable qualities of statesmanship and because the experience he had gained would enable him better than any other to carry the struggle for national life and freedom to a successful issue. The feeble intrigues of Secretary Chase and General Frémont to supplant him in his own party suffered an early blight. In the national convention of the Republican party, held at Baltimore on June 7, 1864, the roll-call on nomination showed an undivided vote for Abraham Lincoln in every State delegation except that of Missouri, which, under instructions, gave its first ballot to Grant, but immediately changed and made Lincoln's nomination unanimous. While Lincoln's prudent but tactful management of the slavery question in the past had been perhaps the most influential cause of this unanimity, his counsel and influence were already shaping the final solution of this most perplexing problem of national destiny. In the preceding session of Congress a joint resolution had been introduced, perfected, and passed in the Senate, proposing the XIIIth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, viz.: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." In the House of Representatives, however, the party attitude of members was such that the necessary two-thirds vote could not then be obtained for it, and it went over as unfinished business. But Congressional and legislative discussion had advanced public opinion to a point which found emphatic expression in the Republican National Convention. The preliminary speeches foreshadowed the declaration embodied in the third resolution of the platform, which approved all the Acts hitherto directed against the "institution," and declared in favour of an amendment to the Constitution terminating and for ever prohibiting the existence of slavery in the United States. To the Committee that notified him of his nomination, Lincoln gave a special and hearty approval of this resolution of the platform. "Such an amendment," said he, "to the Constitution, as is now proposed, became a fitting and necessary conclusion to the final success. of the Union cause. Such alone can meet and cover all cavils. Now the unconditional Union men, north and south, perceive its importance and embrace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union let us labour to give it legal form and practical effect." And to a friend in confidential conversation he remarked that it was he who had suggested to Senator Morgan to put the subject into his opening speech when he called the Convention to order. In his annual message of December 6, 1864, President Lincoln argued with emphasis in favour of completing the enactment of the 600 The Amendment adopted [1865 XIIIth Amendment. "Although the present is the same Congress,' said he, "and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question is not changed, but an intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not. . . . It is the voice of the people, now for the first time heard upon the question." The people had indeed spoken with marked emphasis. The singular misconceptions of correct national policy, in which the Democratic party had so long allied itself with the pro-slavery interests of the South, carried the mass of its adherents into equally grave blunders of party action during the war. A few sagacious leaders, such as Douglas, Holt, Dix, Butler, Logan, and many of the rank and file, were inspired by a freer and fresher patriotism, and gave hearty assistance to Union and freedom. But the Democratic party as an organisation stubbornly nursed its engrained prejudices, and remained in criticising, obstructing opposition; while a few misguided members of the party attained unenviable notoriety by straining that opposition to an almost open partisanship with Secession. Having opposed both emancipation and the Draft Law, their National Convention could do no better than nominate General McClellan as their candidate for President against Lincoln, and then overweight his faded popularity and blighted military laurels with a platform resolution declaring the war a failure. This compelled McClellan while accepting the nomination to repudiate the platform; and in this awkward predicament the Democratic ticket went to disastrous defeat at the November polls. Lincoln was triumphantly chosen by 212 electoral votes against 21 for McClellan ; while the House of Representatives was reinforced with a strong Republican majority. This decisive voice of the people had been largely stimulated by the decisive work of the army. Grant, in a series of sternly contested but successful battles, had moved from the Wilderness through Virginia with an irresistible steadiness, and now held Richmond and Petersburg in an iron grip. Sherman had swept in a victorious march from Chattanooga through Georgia, and had Savannah practically in his grasp. Early's raid on Washington had been repulsed; and Sheridan had cleared the Shenandoah valley. All the omens indicated the early collapse of the Confederate government. It was under these brightening prospects, which gave the President's words of recommendation an overpowering weight, that, in the second session of the thirty-eighth Congress, the House of Representatives returned to the unfinished XIIIth Amendment passed by the Senate in the previous session. The question was taken up about the middle of December, and debated at intervals for six weeks with unusual seriousness, 1865] Compensation proposed but rejected 601 the Republicans favouring, the Democrats opposing, the proposal. Gradually the latter yielded to the logic of events; and in the final vote, taken on January 31, 1865, a sufficient number of liberal men, among both the Democratic members and those representing the border Slave States, united with the Republicans in passing the Joint Resolution by the two-thirds majority required by the Constitution. The formal ratification of the amendment by three-fourths of the States was begun by Illinois on the following day, February 1, and completed within the year; and on December 18, 1865, official proclamation was made that it had become valid as a part of the Constitution of the United States. On February 3, 1865, three days after the House of Representatives had passed the XIIIth Amendment, President Lincoln and Secretary Seward, as elsewhere related, met the Confederate Commissioners at the Hampton Roads conference, in which the subject of emancipation was earnestly reviewed. The President repeated with emphasis that while he would never change or modify his proclamation, he had issued it only as a necessary war-measure to maintain the Union. He believed, however, that the people of the North were as responsible for slavery as the people of the South, and if the war should then cease with the voluntary abolition of slavery by the States, he individually should be in favour of the government paying the owners a fair indemnity for their loss; and he added further that he believed this feeling was widely prevalent in the North. Immediately upon his return from the Hampton Roads conference to Washington, at a Cabinet Meeting held on February 5, the President submitted to his constitutional advisers a message addressed to Congress, recommending that that body should pass a joint resolution offering the Slave States a compensation of $400,000,000, upon condition that all rebellion should cease, before April 1, half the sum to be paid at that date, and the other half as soon as the XIIIth Amendment should become valid constitutional law, by the ratification of the requisite number of States. The proposition was, however, disapproved by the whole Cabinet; and the President, in evident surprise and sorrow at the want of statesmanlike liberality shown by his executive council, folded and laid away the draft of his message. Notwithstanding the radical disagreement, his mind strongly retained the generous impulse. "How long will the war last?" he asked, and when no one replied he answered himself, "A hundred days. We are spending now in carrying on the war $3,000,000 a day, which will amount to all this money, besides all the lives." With a deep sigh he added, "But you are all opposed to me, and I will not send the message." It is fair to infer that, even after this, he still clung to the hope that an opportunity would arise when he might make some such goodwill offering to the South. In his last public address, on the evening 602 Lincoln on slavery as the cause of the war [1862 of April 11, after a discussion of questions of reconstruction, he used these significant words: "In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper." With what earnest solicitude President Lincoln had, during four years, traced out the causes and consequences of the great national transformation from slavery to freedom with what high purpose and under what solemn sense of responsibility he had wrought and guided the grand act of liberation to success and fulfilment can, after all, be best understood from the words of his second Inaugural Address, in which he applied the eternal law of compensation to the sin and the atonement of American slavery. Premising that "the institution" was the origin of the civil conflict, he concluded: "Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered: that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope - fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' - "With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphanto do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." CHAPTER XIX THE SOUTH DURING THE WAR (1861-1865) THE secession of the Southern States and the formation of the Confederacy were events for which the previous political history of the United States had laid the foundation. When the movement culminated in the winter of 1860-1 the Southerners acted promptly, with decision, and with increasing unanimity of feeling. South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860; Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana followed suit during January; Virginia, Arkansas, and North Carolina delayed till May, Tennessee till June, 1861. The decided action taken by President Lincoln as a result of the attack on Fort Sumter on April 11 turned the scale in the doubtful States. The Montgomery Convention met on February 4, 1861, and included delegates from all the above States except from Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee. In four days a provisional constitution was drawn up and adopted. On February 9 the Convention elected Jefferson Davis President and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-president of the new Confederacy. They assumed office on the 18th. Before adjourning, the Congress, beside passing the necessary revenue measures, adopted on March 11, 1861, a permanent constitution, which was formally ratified by the legislatures of the eleven States concerned, and in all cases by large majorities. The prominent candidates for the Presidency had been Jefferson Davis, Alexander H. Stephens, and Robert Toombs. Of these, Davis and Toombs had been, at Washington and in their respective States, Mississippi and Georgia, outspoken and extreme advocates of States rights, and strongly favoured secession. Davis, after graduating at West Point in 1828, and holding a commission in the United States army for seven years, and again during the Mexican war, settled in Mississippi as a cotton-planter. From 1845 to 1846 and from 1847 to the outbreak of the war he was at Washington, first in the House of Representatives, then, from 1847 to 1851, and again from 1857 to 1861, in the Senate; while from 1852 to 1857 he was Secretary of War. While President of the Confederacy he did not excel as a |