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 the desirability of disposing of the matter while the present Congress was in the way with it, if this could possibly be compassed. That it could be carried only by the aid of a contingent of Democratic votes did not so much discourage them as stimulate their zeal; for such votes would prevent the mischief of a partisan or sectional aspect. In his message to Congress, December 6, 1864, the President referred to the measure which, after its failure in the preceding session, was now to come up again, by virtue of that shrewd motion for reconsideration. Intelligibly, though not in terms, he appealed for Democratic help. He said:--