by it in our Foreign
Relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white
Military force, no loss by it anyhow, or anywhere. On the contrary, it
shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen,
and laborers.

"These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no
cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the
measure.

"And now let any Union man who complains of this measure, test himself
by writing down in one line, that he is for subduing the Rebellion by
force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking one hundred and
thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they
would be best for the measure he condemns. If he cannot face his case
so stated, it is only because he cannot face the truth.

"I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this
tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have
controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
Now at the end of three years' struggle, the Nation's condition is not
what either Party, or any man, devised or expected. God alone can claim
it.

"Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a
great wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of the
South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial
history will find therein new causes to attest and revere the Justice
and goodness of God.
"Yours truly,
"A. LINCOLN."

The 8th of April (1864) turned out to be the decisive field-day in the
Senate. Sumner endeavored to close the debate on that day in a speech
remarkable no less for its power and eloquence of statement, its
strength of Constitutional exposition, and its abounding evidences of
extensive historical research and varied learning, than for its
patriotic fervor and devotion to human Freedom.

Toward the end of that great speech, however, he somewhat weakened its
force by suggesting a change in the phraseology of the proposed
Thirteenth Amendment, so that, instead of almost precisely following the
language of the Jeffersonian Ordinance of 1787, as recommended by the
Judiciary Committee of the Senate, it should read thus:

"All Persons are Equal before the Law, so that no person can hold
another as a Slave; and the Congress may make all laws necessary and
proper to carry this Article into effect everyw