constantly encouraged and protected by Lincoln when Congress looked upon them somewhat coldly or his generals showed jealousy of their action, had banded themselves together to form State Governments with Constitutions that forbade slavery.  Lincoln, it may be noted, had suggested to Louisiana that it would be well to frame some plan by which the best educated of the negroes should be admitted to the franchise.  Four years after his death a Constitutional Amendment was passed by which any distinction as to franchise on the ground of race or colour is forbidden in America.  The policy of giving the vote to negroes indiscriminately had commended itself to the cold pedantry of some persons, including Chase, on the ground of some natural right of all men to the suffrage; but it was adopted as the most effective protection for the negroes against laws, as to vagrancy and the like, by which it was feared they might practically be enslaved again.  Whatever the excuse for it, it would seem to have proved in fact a great obstacle to healthy relations between the two races.  The true policy in such a matter is doubtless that which Rhodes and other statesmen adopted in the Cape Colony and which Lincoln had advocated in the case of Louisiana.  It would be absurd to imagine that the spirit which could champion the rights of the negro and yet face fairly the abiding difficulty of his case died in America with Lincoln, but it lost for many a year to come its only great exponent.

But the question of overwhelming importance, between the principles of slavery and of freedom, was ready for final decision when local opinion in six slave States was already moving as we have seen.  The Republican Convention of 1864, which again chose Lincoln as its candidate for the Presidency, declared itself in favour of a Constitutional Amendment to abolish slavery once for all throughout America.  Whether the first suggestion came from him or not, it is known that Lincoln’s private influence was energetically used to procure this resolution of the Convention.  In his Message to Congress in 1864 he urged the initiation of this Amendment.  Observation of elections made it all but certain that the next Congress would be ready to take this action, but Lincoln pleaded with the present doubtful Congress for the advantage which would be gained by ready, and if possible, unanimous concurrence in the North in the course which would soon prevail.  The necessary Resolution was passed in the Senate, but in the House of Representatives till within a few hours of the vote it was said to be “the toss of a copper” whether the majority of two-thirds, required for such a purpose, would be obtained.  In the efforts made on either side to win over the few doubtful voters Lincoln had taken his part.  Right or wrong, he was not the man to see a great and beneficent Act in danger of postponement without being tempted to secure it if he could do so by terrifying some unprincipled and