South would be permitted. So faithful were we to
the compromises of our fathers; so loth to believe in the wicked purpose
that had moved the rebellion. Three years of desperate resistance to the
nation's authority, three years of war, with its lessons of bitterness,
and grief, and death, and agony worse than death, have convinced us that
no further compromise is possible. Men told us so before, but we were
too devoted to the Union to believe in a treason that would not stop
short of the nation's complete dishonor. God be thanked that we know the
issue at last! Our conviction has gradually, but how immovably,
established itself! And now the sentiment of the people, no longer
forbearing, but not less just, and based upon the same unalterable
devotion to the Union, withdraws the pledges of the past and dictates an
amendment to the Constitution that shall leave no possibility of
slaveholding treason hereafter. That sentiment has found expression in
two mass conventions, representing the undoubted overwhelming majority
of the people, and it remains now to show the justice of it. It is
accordingly the purpose of this paper to discuss the nature of the
proposed amendment, and to state some controlling reasons in favor of
it.

The question, plainly stated, is: Ought the Constitution to be amended
so as to abolish slavery throughout the United States? Or, in other
words, Ought liberty to become part of the supreme law of the land?
Ought the idea of the nation to be now, at last, incorporated into the
law of the nation, and so made a fixed fact of the nation's history?

It should seem that the mere statement of the question suggests the
basis and positive force of the affirmative of it. For it reminds us at
once of the mighty revolution that has agitated and aroused it. The
progress of a century has been crowded into less than a decade of years.
The statesmanship of 1850 (profound and patriotic, as alas! it is to be
feared, too much of what we call statesmanship to-day is not) has been
outgrown. Let us not be startled by the statement. The highest art of
politics is to recognize existing facts. No thinking person will deny
that the policies of the past are powerless to-day. We cannot, if we
would, unmake the history of the last ten years. _Tempora mutantur, et
mutamur in illis_. Or, as a distinguished and eloquent son of Tennessee
lately paraphrased this old maxim: 'The world moves, and takes us along
with it, whether we will o