nd I am now
carrying on the war for the sole purpose of abolition. So long as I am
President, it shall be carried on for the sole purpose of restoring the
Union." The duty of his official oath compelled him to say this, but he
often and plainly acknowledged that he had no fear of ever being brought
face to face with the painful necessity of saving both the Union and
slavery.

It is worth noticing that the persons who charged upon the President
that he would never assent to a peace which was not founded upon the
abolition of slavery as one of its conditions or stipulations, never
distinctly stated by what right he could insist upon such a condition or
stipulation, or by what process he could establish it or introduce it
into a settlement. Mr. Lincoln certainly never had any thought of
negotiating with the seceded States as an independent country, and
making with them a treaty which could embody an article establishing
emancipation and permanent abolition. He had not power to enter with
them into an agreement of an international character, nor, if they
should offer to return to the Union, retaining their slave institutions,
could he lawfully reject them. The endeavor would be an act of
usurpation, if it was true that no State could go out. The plain truth
was that, from any save a revolutionary point of view, the
constitutional amendment was the only method of effecting the
consummation permanently. When, in June, 1864, Mr. Lincoln said that
abolition of slavery was "a fitting and necessary condition to the final
success of the Union cause," he was obviously speaking of what was
logically "fitting and necessary," and in the same sentence he clearly
specified a constitutional amendment as the practical process. There is
no indication that he ever had any other scheme.

In effect, in electing members of Congress in the autumn of 1864, the
people passed upon the amendment. Votes for Republicans were votes for
the amendment, and the great Republican gain was fairly construed as an
expression of the popular favor towards the measure. But though the
elections thus made the permanent abolition of slavery a reasonably sure
event in the future, yet delay always has dangers. The new Congress
would not meet for over a year. In the interval the Confederacy might
collapse, and abolition become ensnarled with considerations of
reconciliation, of reconstruction, of politics generally. All friends
of the measure, therefore, agreed on t