ction of the American
Union."

When the joint resolution, passed by the Senate, was read in the
House, Mr. Holman objected to the second reading, and on the
question, "Shall the joint resolution be rejected?" the yeas were
55 and the nays 76, an even more discouraging vote than the first.
With 55 members opposed to the amendment, it would require 110 to
carry it, or 34 more than the roll-call had disclosed. The debate
was opened by Mr. Morris of New York who treated the abolition of
slavery as a necessary preliminary to the reconstruction of the
Union.

--Mr. Fernando Wood denounced the movement as "unjust in itself,
a breach of good faith utterly irreconcilable with expediency."

--Mr. Ebon C. Ingersoll of Illinois made a strong and eloquent
appeal for the passage of the amendment and the liberation of the
slave. With the accomplishment of that grand end, said he, "our
voices will ascend to Heaven over a country re-united, over a people
disinthralled, and God will bless us."

--Mr. Samuel J. Randall of Pennsylvania argued earnestly against
the amendment. He regarded it as the beginning of radical changes
in our Constitution, and the forerunner of usurpation. The policy
pursued was uniting the South and dividing the North.

--Mr. Arnold of Illinois said, "in view of the long catalogue of
wrongs which it has inflicted upon the country, I demand to-day
the death of African slavery."

--Mr. Mallory of Kentucky maintained that Mr. Lincoln had been
forced to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation by the governors
who met at Altoona. He was answered by Mr. Boutwell of Massachusetts,
who most effectively disproved the charge.

--Mr. Pendleton of Ohio maintained that three-fourths of the States
possessed neither the power to establish nor to abolish slavery in
all the States. He contended that the power to amend did not carry
with it the power to revolutionize and subvert the form and spirit
of the government.

The vote on the passage of the amendment was taken on the fifteenth
day of June. The yeas were 93, the nays were 65. The yeas were
27 short of the necessary two-thirds. Mr. Ashley of Ohio, who had
by common consent assumed parliamentary charge of the measure,
voted in the negative, and in the exercise of his right under the
rules, entered upon the journal a motion to reconsider the vote.
This ended the contest in the first session of the Thirty-eighth
Congress. Mr. Ashley gave notice that the questi