They returned to Richmond and reported the failure of their efforts to Jefferson Davis, whose disappointment equalled their own, for all had caught eagerly at the hope that this interview would somehow prove a means of escape from the dangers of their situation. President Lincoln, full of kindly thoughts, on the other hand, went back to Washington, intent on making yet one more generous offer to hasten the day of peace. He had told the commissioners that personally he would be in favor of the government paying a liberal amount for the loss of slave property, on condition that the southern States agree of their own accord to the freedom of the slaves. (*) This was indeed going to the extreme of liberality, but Mr. Lincoln remembered that notwithstanding all their offenses the rebels were American citizens, members of the same nation and brothers of the same blood. He remembered, too, that the object of the war, equally with peace and freedom, was to preserve friendship and to continue the Union. Filled with such thoughts and purposes he spent the day after his return in drawing up a new proposal designed as a peace offering to the States in rebellion. On the evening of February 5 he read this to his cabinet. It offered the southern States $400,000,000 or a sum equal to the cost of war for two hundred days, on condition that all fighting cease by the first of April, 1865. He proved more liberal than any of his advisers; and with the words, "You are all against me," sadly uttered, the President folded up the paper, and ended the discussion. * Mr. Lincoln had freed the slaves two years before as a military necessity, and as such it had been accepted by all. Yet a question might arise, when the war ended, as to whether this act of his had been lawful. He was therefore very anxious to have freedom find a place in the Constitution of the United States. This could only be done by an amendment to the Constitution, proposed by Congress, and adopted by the legislatures of three-fourths of the States of the Union. Congress voted in favor of such an amendment on January 31, 1865. Illinois, the President's own State, adopted it on the very next day, and though Mr. Lincoln did not live to see it a part of the Constitution, Secretary Seward, on December 18, 1865, only a few months after Mr. Lincoln's death, was able to make official announcement that 29 States, constituting a majority of three-fourths of the 36 States of the Union, had adopted it, and that therefore it was the law of the land.