By: J. David Gowdy
What permanently ended slavery in America was the very close vote in the House
of Representatives over the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. In the drama that had unfolded, President Abraham Lincoln sought two more votes necessary for the passage of the Amendment in the House of Representatives.
“While the Emancipation
Proclamation was taking its effect in the field, as the Union army advanced, Lincoln also supported Radical Republicans who began to
advocate a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery everywhere in the United States.
On December 14, 1863, Ohio Congressman James M. Ashley introduced such an
amendment in the House of Representatives. Senator John Brooks Henderson of Missouri, a border state
that still sanctioned slavery, followed suit on January 11, 1864, courageously
submitting a joint resolution for an amendment abolishing slavery.
The proposed amendment passed in
the Senate on April 8, 1864, with a vote of 38 to 6. Two months later, however,
it was defeated in the House of Representatives, 95 to 66 (or by another
account, 93-65), shy of the 2/3 necessary for approval. Lincoln, not about to give up, made abolition
a central plank of the National Union platform during his re-election campaign.
He argued,
“When the people in revolt, with
a hundred days of explicit notice, that they could, within those days, resume
their allegiance, without the overthrow of their institution, and that they
could not so resume it afterwards, elected to stand out, such [an] amendment of
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…” (Basler, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 7, 380).
Lincoln’s victory over McClellan in 1864 gave
him a new mandate and enough seats in the House to eventually guarantee passage
of the stalled amendment. Not content to wait until the new Congress met in
March, the amendment’s supporters brought the measure to another vote in the
House on January 31, 1865.
On being informed that the amendment
was still two votes short, Lincoln is reported
to have told the Republican Congressmen: “I am President of the United States,
clothed with great power. The abolition of slavery by Constitutional provisions
settles the fate, for all … time, not only of the millions now in bondage, but
of unborn millions to come – a measure of such importance that those two votes
must be procured. I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done,
but remember that I am President of the United States, clothed with immense
power, and I expect you to procure those two votes ...” (John B. Alley, Reminiscences
of Abraham Lincoln, ed., Rice, 1886 ed., p 585-6. Per Goodwin, p. 687). [emphasis added]
The outcome of the vote was in
doubt until the final hour. A Pennsylvania Democrat, Archibald McAllister,
opened the debate by explaining why he had changed his vote from a “Nay” to an
“Aye.” He had been in favor of exhausting all means of conciliation, McAllister
stated, but was now satisfied that nothing short of independence would satisfy
the Southern Confederacy, and that therefore it must be destroyed, and he must
cast his vote against its cornerstone, and declare eternal war with the enemies
of the country. Fellow Pennsylvania Democrat Alexander Hamilton Coffroth also
changed his vote, and gave a speech advocating passage. Arguments continued
until, finally, the votes were tallied. This time it passed, by a vote of 119
to 56, with 8 abstentions. When Speaker Colfax declared the results, “a
moment of silence succeeded, and then, from floor and galleries, burst a
simultaneous shout of joy and triumph, spontaneous, irrepressible and
uncontrollable, swelling and prolonged in one vast volume of reverberating
thunder…”
(Report of the special committee on the passage by the House of
Representatives of the constitutional amendment for the abolition of slavery.
January 31st, 1865: The Action of the Union League Club on the Amendment,
February 9, 1865, in “From Slavery to Freedom.” American Memory, Library of
Congress).”
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