A salute of one hundred guns soon made the occasion the subject of comment and congratulation throughout the city.  On the following night a considerable procession marched with music to the Executive Mansion to carry popular greetings to the President.  In response to their calls he appeared at a window and made a brief speech, of which only an abstract report was preserved, but which is nevertheless important as showing the searching analysis of cause and effect this question had undergone in his mind, the deep interest he felt in it, and the far-reaching consequences he attached to the measure and its success: 

“The occasion was one of congratulation to the country and to the whole world.  But there is a task yet before us—­to go forward and have consummated by the votes of the States that which Congress had so nobly begun yesterday.  He had the honor to inform those present that Illinois had already to-day done the work.  Maryland was about half through, but he felt proud that Illinois was a little ahead.  He thought this measure was a very fitting, if not an indispensable, adjunct to the winding up of the great difficulty.  He wished the reunion of all the States perfected, and so effected as to remove all causes of disturbance in the future; and to attain this end it was necessary that the original disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted out.  He thought all would bear him witness that he had never shrunk from doing all that he could to eradicate slavery, by issuing an emancipation proclamation.  But that proclamation falls far short of what the amendment will be when fully consummated.  A question might be raised whether the proclamation was legally valid.  It might be urged that it only aided those that came into our lines, and that it was inoperative as to those who did not give themselves up; or that it would have no effect upon the children of slaves born hereafter; in fact, it would be urged that it did not meet the evil.  But this amendment is a king’s cure-all for all the evils.  It winds the whole thing up.  He would repeat that it was the fitting, if not the indispensable, adjunct to the consummation of the great game we are playing.”

Widely divergent views were expressed by able constitutional lawyers as to what would constitute a valid ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment; some contending that ratification by three fourths of the loyal States would be sufficient, others that three fourths of all the States, whether loyal or insurrectionary, was necessary.  Mr. Lincoln, in a speech on Louisiana reconstruction, while expressing no opinion against the first proposition, nevertheless declared with great argumentative force that the latter “would be unquestioned and unquestionable”; and this view appears to have governed the action of his successor.