When it was proposed to station Halleck in general command, he insisted, to use his own language, on the appointment of a General-in-Chief who should be held responsible for results. We appointed him, and all went well enough until after Pope's defeat, when he broke down,--nerve and pluck all gone,--and has ever since evaded all possible responsibility, little more, since that, than a first-rate clerk. General Francis V. Greene, reviewing the war as a whole, says that If Lincoln had placed Grant in command of the Western armies in July, 1862, when Halleck was made General-in-Chief, instead of in October, 1863, it would have probably shortened the war by a year.[73] This opinion is concurred in by General Grenville M. Dodge, one of the surviving major-generals of the Civil War,[74] and I imagine that it will not be disputed by any military man at the present day. These citations show that the opinions held by Trumbull, as to the inefficiency of the directing force of the Union armies, up to the time when Grant was called to take command at Washington, were not those of a mere fault-finder and backbiter. A notable speech in favor of the anti-slavery amendment was made by Henderson, of Missouri, who was himself a slave-owner. The most impressive speech made in either branch of Congress, however, was that of Senator Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland. The fact that he represented a slaveholding State could not fail to add force to any argument he might make in support of the measure, but the argument itself, both in its moral and its legal aspects, was of surpassing merit. It deserves a high place in the annals of senatorial eloquence. The constitutional amendment was under debate in the Senate until the 8th of April, 1864, when it was passed by a vote of 38 to 6. The negative votes were the two from Delaware, two from Kentucky, and those of Hendricks, of Indiana, and McDougall, of California. It then went to the House, where it was under consideration till the 15th of June, when it failed of passage by a vote of 93 to 65, not two thirds. The Democrats generally voted in the negative. A second attempt to pass it was made in the House on February 1, 1865, this time successfully, the yeas being 119 and the nays, 56. There was an extraordinary scene in the House when the final vote was taken. It is described by George W. Julian, in his "Recollections" (page 250), thus: