“‘And God said to Abraham, Have I borne with you [him] these fourscore years, and canst thou not bear with him one night, who art thyself a sinner?’ Sir, in exactly the spirit inculcated by that fable I would deal with Slavery; and I would listen to-day as it were to the voice of God, who asks us, Have I borne with this thing so many generations, and cannot you bear with it dying, when it begins on the next Fourth of July?”[79] Mr. Wade, in the same spirit, said:-- “My friend from Massachusetts, by his proposition, strikes this institution down at one dash. I should like to see it go; but I must look a little to see what its effect will be, after all.”[80] Before the vote was taken, Mr. Carlile, of Virginia, remarked:-- “Mr. President, it is my sincere belief that this disposition to interfere with the rights of the States, exhibited by this Congress, has prolonged the war,--that, if persisted in, the war becomes a war of indefinite duration, and that the Constitutional Union our fathers formed will be lost to us and our posterity forever.”[81] July 14th, the question was taken on Mr. Sumner’s amendment, which was rejected,--Yeas 11, Nays 24. Mr. Lane, of Kansas, moved that all slaves in the State, July 4, 1863, and under the age of ten, shall be free when they arrive at the age of twenty-one, and all slaves over ten and under twenty-one shall be free when they arrive at the age of twenty-five; and the amendment was adopted,--Yeas 25, Nays 12. * * * * * The question then occurred on the passage of the bill, when Mr. Sumner remarked:-- I renounce the intention of presenting again the amendment you have already voted down; but it is none the less important in my judgment. I do not like to occupy the time of the Senate; but I cannot doubt that you have acted on the amendment hastily, and without full consideration. Why, Sir, it is simply the old Jeffersonian ordinance, which, when originally adopted for the great Territory of the Northwest, operated upon Slavery already there, and absolutely forbade this wrong from that time forward. In point of fact, slaves were freed by this ordinance.