In short, the only absolute eradicating cure was a constitutional amendment;[77] and, therefore, it was towards securing this that the President bent all his energies. He could use, of course, only personal influence, not official authority; for the business, as such, lay with Congress. In December, 1863, motions for such an amendment were introduced in the House; and in January, 1864, like resolutions were offered in the Senate. The debate in the Senate was short; it opened on March 28, and the vote was taken April 8; it stood 38 ayes, 6 noes. This was gratifying; but unfortunately the party of amendment had to face a very different condition of feeling in the House. The President, says Mr. Arnold, "very often, with the friends of the measure, canvassed the House to see if the requisite number could be obtained, but we could never count a two-thirds vote." The debate began on March 19; not until June 15 was the vote taken, and then it showed 93 ayes, 65 noes, being a discouraging deficiency of 27 beneath the requisite two thirds. Thereupon Ashley of Ohio changed his vote to the negative, and then moved a reconsideration, which left the question to come up again in the next session. Practically, therefore, at the adjournment of Congress, the amendment was left as an issue before the people in the political campaign of the summer of 1864; and in that campaign it was second only to the controlling question of peace or war. Mr. Lincoln, taking care to omit no effort in this business, sent for Senator Morgan, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, which was to make the Republican nomination for the presidency and to frame the Republican platform, and said to him: "I want you to mention in your speech, when you call the convention to order, as its keynote, and to put into the platform, as the keystone, the amendment of the Constitution abolishing and prohibiting slavery forever." Accordingly the third plank in that platform declared that slavery was the cause and the strength of the rebellion, that it was "hostile to the principle of republican government," and that the "national safety demanded its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic," and that to this end the Constitution ought to be so amended as to "terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits or the jurisdiction of the United States." Thus at the special request of the President the issue was distinctly presented to the voters of the country. The Copperheads, the conservatives, and reactionaries, and many of the war Democrats, promptly opened their batteries against both the man and the measure.