Delaware and Kentucky, with twenty-one electoral votes, while Lincoln received the votes of all the New England States, of New York and Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Tennessee, Louisiana and Arkansas, and of the new State of Nevada, which was, on the 31st of October admitted to the Union. Their electoral vote, as finally counted, was 212. The popular vote was: The claim had been occasionally made that the Democrats contributed more soldiers to the Union armies than the Republicans. If this had been so the vote of the soldiers in the field ought to have been larger for McClellan, the "idol of the soldiers" than that for Lincoln. The result was very different from that. Fourteen of the states had authorized, their soldiers to vote in the field, those of New York sending home their ballots sealed to be cast by their next friends. The vote of the Minnesota soldiers did not reach her State canvassers in time to be counted, and were probably destroyed unopened. | So with part of the Vermont soldiers' vote. Of the states whose soldiers voted so that their ballots can be distinguished, the army vote was returned as follows, and Lincoln's majority was 85,463: One of the most gratifying results of the election was the defeat for re-election as Governor of New York, of Horatio Seymour, who, as President of the Chicago Convention, had been the most bitter in his assaults on Lincoln. During the following period, Congress was divided politically as follows: Thirty-ninth Congress. Senate Republicans, 42; Democrats, 10. Fortieth Congress. Senate Republicans, 42; Democrats, 11. The vote of Michigan, as cast for President was: Lincoln, 91,251; McClellan, 74,604, a majority of 16,647. The Presidential electors were as follows: At Large-Robert R. Beecher, Thomas D. Gilbert. By Districts (1) Frederick Waldorf; (2) Marsh Giddings; (3) Christian E. Berbach; (4) Perry Hannah; (5) Omar D. Conger; (6) George W. Pack. The vote for Governor, as officially returned, was: Henry H. Crapo, 81,744; William M. Fenton, 71,301; Republican majority, 10,443. In this, however, the vote of Alpena and Marquette Counties was omitted because it was returned too late for the official count, and the soldiers' vote was thrown out under a Supreme Court decision. The vote as cast was Crapo, 91,356; Fenton, 74,293; Crapo's plurality, 17,063. The Congressional delegation was again solidly Republican and consisted of the following members: Fernando C. Beaman, John F. Driggs, Thomas W. Ferry, John W. Longyear, Rowland E. Trowbridge, Charles Upson. The Legislature chosen at this time elected Jacob M. Howard United States Senator for the full term. To Mr. Lincoln the election was significant and gratifying in many ways. On the evening of November 10 the various Lincoln and Johnson clubs of the District serenaded the President, and in his acknowledgment of the compliment he said: "It has long been a grave question whether our Government, not too strong for the liberties of the people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies. On this point the present rebellion brought our Government to a severe test, and a presidential election, occurring in a regular course during the rebellion, added not a little to the strain. "If the loyal people united were put to the utmost of their strength by the rebellion, must they not fail when divided and partially paralyzed by a political war among themselves? But the election was a necessity. We cannot have free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forego or postpone a National election it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us. The strife of the election is but human nature, practically applied to the facts of the case. What has occurred in this case must ever recur in similar cases. Human nature will not change. In any future great National trial, compared with the men of this, we will have men as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us, therefore, study the incidents of this as philosophy to learn wisdom from, and none of them as wrongs to be avenged. "But the election, along with its incidental and undesirable strife, has done good, too. It has demonstrated that a people's Government can sustain a National election in the midst of a great civil war. Until now, it has not been known to the world that this was a possibility. It shows, also, how sound and how strong we still are. It shows that even among the candidates of the same party, he who is most devoted to the Union, and most opposed to treason, can receive most of the people's votes. It shows, also, to the extent yet known, that we have more men now than we had when the war began. Gold is good in its place; but living, brave and patriotic men are better than gold." Of the various letters of congratulation which Mr. Lincoln received none touched him more than those which came from the Christian churches. His own religious feeling, his sense of reliance upon Providence, had been intensifying for some time, and his responses to these church congratulations give full expression to it. XIII. THE THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. Important Events Attending the Close of President Lincoln's Administration-Prominent Members in the House of the Thirty-eighth Congress The Thirteenth Amendment Introduced by an Old Democrat-Its Easy Passage in the Senate-Prolonged Contest Over the Measure in the House-Being Defeated Its Parliamentary Standing Was Preserved by James M. Ashley-The Leading Speakers for and Against It-The President and Secretary Seward Use Their Influence In Its Favor-Final Adoption of the Amendment. The period from Lincoln's second election to his assassination was fraught with more events of great importance than any other five months in the history of the country. It witnessed the final extinc tion of slavery by the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the final defeat of the rebel armies, the complete collapse of the rebellion, and the first steps toward reconstruction. In the House of the Thirty-eighth Congress, which occupied a large amount of time in the discussion of the Thirteenth Amndment, a few of the most distinguished members of former Congresses had disappeared, among them E. G. Spaulding and Roscoe Conkling, of New York, and Speaker Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania. To take their places there appeared an unusually large number of new members who afterwards attained National distinction, including James G. Blaine, of Maine; George S. Boutwell, Samuel Hooper and William B. Washburn, of Massachusetts; Thomas A. Jencks, of Rhode Island; Charles O'Neil and Glenni W. Schofield, of Pennsylvania; John A. J. Creswell and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland; Robert C. Schenck, of Ohio; William B. Allison, John A. Kasson and James F. Wilson, of Iowa. Mr. Grow's retirement gave opportunity for the election to the Speakership of Schuyler Colfax, who for many years after this was among the most conspicuous figures in National polities. A number of the new members made their first Congressional speeches of any importance during the pendency of the Thirteenth Amendment, which in form was as follows: Be it Resolved, etc., That the following Article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several states as an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of said Constitution, namely: Article XIII. Section I. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Sec. II. Congress shall have power to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation. It is a striking comment on the changes which the war had brought in individual and party politics, that this Amendment should be introduced in the Senate, not by one of the old Abolition or Free Soil Senators, but by an old Douglas Democrat from a Slave State. Gen. John B. Henderson had been appointed a Senator from Missouri in January, 1862, after Trusten Polk was expelled for joining in the Secession movement. He was a Douglas Democrat up to the close of the campaign of 1860, but when the Secession movement began to take form, he became one of the most active Unionists in the State, and was of great service in frustrating the schemes of the Secessionists. In the Senate he acted with the Republicans, except on what he considered as extreme measures. The Confiscation Act of 1862, for instance, he opposed, because it would "cement the Southern mind against us, and drive new armies of excited and deluded men from the border states to espouse the cause of the rebellion," but he earnestly supported Mr. Lincoln's Compensated Emancipation policy, and labored strenuously to secure the passage of the Missouri Compensation Bill. With the failure of half way measures his Anti-Slavery sentiments grew, and he finally became a fit leader in the Senate of the movement for securing the complete abolition of slavery. The Amendment had an easy road in that body. After its introduction it took the usual course of reference to the Judiciary Committee, which reported it favorably, and it passed by a vote of 38 to 6, as follows: Yeas-Fessenden and Morrill, of Maine; Clark and Hale, of New Hampshire; Sumner and Wilson, of Massachusetts; Anthony and Sprague, of Rhode Island; Dixon and Foster, of Connecticut; Collamer and Foot, of Vermont; Harris and Morgan, of New York; Ten |