The resolution was rejected for failure of the two-thirds vote required by the Constitution on a question of amendment; the vote standing, yeas ninety-four, nays sixty-five. Which vote has definitely determined two things: first, that the party which calls itself Democratic is afraid to trust this question to the people, and so belies its honored name; and secondly, that there is a political element in our country whose attachment to the slaveholding interest survives the attachment of the slaveholding interest to the Union. Is this the best evidence of patriotism? Three years ago this summer of 1864, even after the treason of Southern leaders had precipitated the flagrant Southern rebellion, ay, and even after treason had dared the loyal army of the nation and flaunted its defiant banner on the field of battle, the sentiment of a forbearing people declared that no interference with the local establishments of the treason-infected South would be permitted. So faithful were we to the compromises of our fathers; so loth to believe in the wicked purpose that had moved the rebellion. Three years of desperate resistance to the nation's authority, three years of war, with its lessons of bitterness, and grief, and death, and agony worse than death, have convinced us that no further compromise is possible. Men told us so before, but we were too devoted to the Union to believe in a treason that would not stop short of the nation's complete dishonor. God be thanked that we know the issue at last! Our conviction has gradually, but how immovably, established itself! And now the sentiment of the people, no longer forbearing, but not less just, and based upon the same unalterable devotion to the Union, withdraws the pledges of the past and dictates an amendment to the Constitution that shall leave no possibility of slaveholding treason hereafter. That sentiment has found expression in two mass conventions, representing the undoubted overwhelming majority of the people, and it remains now to show the justice of it. It is accordingly the purpose of this paper to discuss the nature of the proposed amendment, and to state some controlling reasons in favor of it. The question, plainly stated, is: Ought the Constitution to be amended so as to abolish slavery throughout the United States? Or, in other words, Ought liberty to become part of the supreme law of the land? Ought the idea of the nation to be now, at last, incorporated into the law of the nation, and so made a fixed fact of the nation's history?