dingly, he offered
an amendment to the effect "that the convention hereinafter provided
for, in the Constitution to be framed by it, make provision that from
and after the fourth day of July, 1863, within the limits of said
State, there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall be
duly convicted."[81] A vote on the amendment was requested and ordered
but not then taken.

Dissatisfied with the purport of the proposed amendment, Senator
Willey expressed his intention to amend the same; whereupon the
presiding officer of the Senate proposed that he offer an amendment to
the bill rather than to the proposed amendment of Senator Sumner. In
the meanwhile, Mr. Hale, of New Hampshire, a member of the committee
that framed the bill, affirmed his intention to sustain it. His
remarks were suspended by order of the chair for the purpose of
considering another matter which had priority to the one then being
discussed.

On the motion of Senator Willey the bill was again considered on the
first day of July, the question pending being the amendment of Mr.
Sumner.[82] In support thereof, Mr. Sumner asserted that from
statistics of Mr. Willey it appeared that twelve thousand bondsmen in
Western Virginia were doomed to continue as such for the remainder of
their lives, and that consequently the Senate must, for a generation,
be afflicted with two additional slave-holding members. He quoted from
Webster's speech of December 22, 1845, on the admission of Texas into
the Union and rested his case on its arguments. Briefly stated, Mr.
Webster opposed the admission of other States into the Union as slave
States, and at the same time granting to them the inequalities arising
from the mode of apportioning representation to Congress, as granted
by the Constitution to the original slave-holding States. He held that
the free States have the right to demand the abolition of slavery by a
commonwealth seeking admission with a slave-holding constitution.[83]

During the continuation of the debate, Mr. Hale asserted that Mr.
Webster abandoned the position just attributed to him when in 1850 he
voted against any restrictions upon any territory coming into the
Union with a slave-holding constitution and when he voted exclusively
against applying the "Wilmot Proviso" to these States. Mr. Hale added
tersely that since Congress had consistently admitted States with
slave-holding c