white-livered opponents.  With the knowledge that he was always acquiring of the persons in politics, he had been able to pick out two Democratic Congressmen who were fit for his purpose—­presumably they lay under suspicion of one of those treasonable practices which martial law under Lincoln treated very unceremoniously.  He sent for them.  He told them that the gaining of a certain number of doubtful votes would secure the Resolution.  He told them that he was President of the United States.  He told them that the President of the United States in war time exercised great and dreadful powers.  And he told them that he looked to them personally to get him those votes.  Whether this wrong manoeuvre affected the result or not, on January 31, 1865, the Resolution was passed in the House by a two-thirds majority with a few votes to spare, and the great crowd in the galleries, defying all precedent, broke out in a demonstration of enthusiasm which some still recall as the most memorable scene in their lives.  On December 18 of that year, when Lincoln had been eight months dead, William Seward, as Secretary of State, was able to certify that the requisite majority of States had passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the cause of that “irrepressible conflict” which he had foretold, and in which he had played a weak but valuable part, was for ever extinguished.

At the present day, alike in the British Empire and in America, the unending difficulty of wholesome human relations between races of different and unequal development exercises many minds; but this difficulty cannot obscure the great service done by those who, first in England and later and more hardly in America, stamped out that cardinal principle of error that any race is without its human claim.  Among these men William Lloyd Garrison lived to see the fruit of his labours, and to know and have friendly intercourse with Lincoln.  There have been some comparable instances in which men with such different characters and methods have unconsciously conspired for a common end, as these two did when Garrison was projecting the “Liberator” and Lincoln began shaping himself for honourable public work in the vague.  The part that Lincoln played in these events did not seem to him a personal achievement of his own.  He appeared to himself rather as an instrument.  “I claim not,” he once said in this connection, “to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.”  In 1864, when a petition was sent to him from some children that there should be no more child slaves, he wrote, “Please tell these little people that I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.”  Yet, at least, he redeemed the boyish pledge that has been, fancifully perhaps, ascribed to him; each opportunity that to his judgment ever presented itself of striking some blow for human freedom was taken; the blows were timed and directed by the full force of his sagacity, and they were never restrained by private ambition or fear.  It is probable that upon that cool review, which in the case of this singular figure is difficult, the sense of his potent accomplishment would not diminish, but increase.