ny other propositions offered, considered, and defeated,
to wit: Propositions from the Senate Committee of thirteen appointed
December 18, 1860; propositions of Douglas, Seward, and others;
also propositions from a meeting of Senators and members from the
border, free, and slave States, all relating to slavery, and proposed
with a view of stopping the already precipitated secession of
States.(119)

Some of these propositions were exasperatingly humiliating, and
only possibly justifiable by the times.

Though Lincoln's election as President was claimed to be a good
cause for secession, and though much of the compromise talk was to
appease his party opponents as well as the South, he was opposed
to bargaining himself into the office to which the people had
elected him. With respect to this matter (January 30, 1861) he
said:

"I will suffer death before I will consent, or advise my friends
to consent, to any concession or compromise which looks like buying
the privilege of taking possession of the government to which we
have a constitutional right."

We have now done with legislation, attempted legislation, and
constitutional amendments to protect and extend slavery in the
Republic. Slavery appealed to war, and by the inexorable decree
of war its fate must be decided.

The _Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln_ (January 1,
1863) and the _Thirteenth_ Amendment to the Constitution (1865)
freed all slaves in the Union; the _Fourteenth_ Amendment (1868)
provided that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the State wherein they reside"; and the _Fifteenth_
Amendment (1870) gave the right to vote to all citizens of the
United States regardless of "_race, color, or previous condition
of servitude_." These are all simply the decrees of war, written
in the organic law of the United States at the end of the national
four years' baptism of blood. Embodied in them are no concessions
or compromises; the evil was torn out by the roots, and the Christian
world, the progressive civilization of the age, and the consciences
of enlightened mankind _now_ approve what was done.

The war, with its attendant horrors and evils, was necessary to
terminate the deep-seated, time-honored, and unholy institution of
human slavery, so long embedded in our social, political, and
commercial relations, and sustained by our prejudices, bo