"Constitutional" Quotations from "And There Was Light" by John Meacham

[David Lockmiller]

On Monday, December 14, 1863 -- just after the Gettysburg Address and while Lincoln was still recuperating from smallpox -- Representative James M. Ashley of Ohio had proposed the "submission to the several States of a proposition to amend the national Constitution prohibiting slavery, or involuntary servitude, in all of the States and Territories now owned or which may be hereafter acquired by the United States." The war was proving more than a match for the long-standing federal consensus that had protected slavery where it existed. Battle after battle, casualty count after casualty count, military campaign after military campaign. Northerners who had been willing to let the institution stand were impatient and more open to radical measures. . . . An abolition amendment was approved by the Senate on Friday, April 8 [1864]; the House would narrowly would narrowly fail to muster the necessary two-thirds majority for passage on Wednesday, June 15.

Lincoln had apparently been quietly supportive of the movement before June, but he had also wanted time to gauge public reaction to the proposal before committing himself. [The Republican nominating convention in early June 1864 in] Baltimore gave him the moment he had been looking for. "The unconditional Union men, North and South, perceive [the abolition amendment's importance, and embrace it," the president wrote in the published acceptance of his renomination. "In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it legal form, and practical effect." The Lincoln who went before the voters in 1864, therefore, was unambiguously linked with, and in favor of, the immediate, uncompensated, and permanent abolition of slavery.

(And There Was Light, by John Meacham, Page 327.)