1. The proposed amendment finds its justification and highest warrant, as a measure of political reform, in the _fact of the Southern Confederacy_. This fact, pure and simple, is the controlling and abundant necessity for it. We need not take the ground that slavery is the cause of the rebellion: though to the philosophical inquirer it certainly seems difficult to reach any other conclusion. We Americans are so much under the influence of partisan prejudices, so surrounded with the complications of present and past political issues, that for us a dispassionate study of this point is almost, or quite, impossible. But the investigations of impartial and unprejudiced foreigners seem remarkably to concur in designating slavery as the moving cause of the war. We may cite, for example, the recent profound review of the slave power by Professor Cairnes. And surely no person who pauses to reflect upon the inherent nature of the slave system as a labor basis of society, will venture to deny that such a principle is at war with the elemental principles of our Government. No person will deny that slavery depreciates the dignity of labor, which is the pride and boast of our institutions. Nor does it need any but the logic of common sense to point out the incongruity of a free government resting, even partially, upon a basis of slave labor. But all this may be waived. We may discard all these considerations. Perhaps it is wise to discard them. Let us forget our differences of political opinion in the past, and seek for points of agreement in the present. Taking this position, we cannot ignore the fact of the Southern Confederacy, and that the avowed basis of it is slavery. It is a stubborn fact confronting us at the outset of our inquiry, and, like Banquo's ghost, 'will not down.' Proclaiming boldly that free labor is a mistake, and unblushingly affirming as a doctrine of social and political economy that 'capital must own labor,' the Southern Confederacy challenges the Christian civilization of the age, and declares its right to exist as an independent nation of slaveholders. How may we explain so monstrous a pretence? There is but one explanation that is adequate. It may be stated in a single word, _ambition_. The lesson of our experience is that this malignant system of slavery, the chattel slavery of the South, is too great a temptation to the ambition of men. Let us not disregard it. Political ambition stands always ready to strike hands with the devil, and the devil is always near the conscience of ambitious men. We have no recourse but to remove the temptation. The death-knell of Carthage is well appropriated: _Servitudo est delenda_. So long as a vestige of the slavery establishment remains, the temptation remains--a deadly risk to our Government. The peril of it is too great. And this furnishes a complete answer to the superficial objection that there is no need of the amendment because slavery is dead