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

[David Lockmiller]

The tide of time was running in favor of abolition. "We can never have an entire peace in this country as long as the institution of slavery remains," said Representative James S. Rollins of Missouri, himself a slave owner.

Lincoln and his men lobbied for the requisite two-thirds majority in the House. It was the right thing to do, and the president believed its success, with border state votes, would at last show the Confederacy that war was done. "The passage of this amendment will clinch the whole subject." Lincoln said: "it will bring the war, I have no doubt, rapidly to a close." Federal appointments, legislative favors, even bribes were rumored to be on offer. "Money will certainly do it, if patriotism fails," one of Seward's agents said. "The greatest measure of the nineteenth century," Thaddeus Stevens remarked, "was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America" -- Lincoln himself. God might be omnipotent, but in this case He needed a bit of help. And Lincoln provided it.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of Tuesday, January 31, 1865, the House approved the Thirteenth Amendment, 119 to 56, with eight members not voting. Lincoln delivered brief but heartfelt remarks at the White House. The amendment, he was reported to have said, "is a King's cure for all the evils. It winds the whole thing up. . . . He could not but congratulate all present, himself, [and] the country and the whole world upon this great moral victory."

(And There Was Light, by John Meacham, Page 354.)