600 The Amendment adopted. [i86, r > XHIth Amendment. "Although the present is the same Congress," said he, "and nearly the same members, and without questioning the wisdom or patriotism of those who stood in opposition, I venture to recommend the reconsideration and passage of the measure at the present session. Of course the abstract question is not changed, but an intervening election shows almost certainly that the next Congress will pass the measure if this does not.... It is the voice of the people, now for the first time heard upon the question." The people had indeed spoken with marked emphasis. The singular misconceptions of correct national policy, in which the Democratic party had so long allied itself with the pro-slavery interests of the South, carried the mass of its adherents into equally grave blunders of party action during the war. A few sagacious leaders, such as Douglas, Holt, Dix, Butler, Logan, and many of the rank and file, were inspired by a freer and fresher patriotism, and gave hearty assistance to Union and freedom. But the Democratic party as an organisation stubbornly nursed its engrained prejudices, and remained in criti- cising, obstructing opposition ; while a few misguided members of the party attained unenviable notoriety by straining that opposition to an almost open partisanship with Secession. Having opposed both eman- cipation and the Draft Law, their National Convention could do no better than nominate General McClellan as their candidate for President against Lincoln, and then overweight his faded popularity and blighted military laurels with a platform resolution declaring the war a failure. This compelled McClellan while accepting the nomination to repudiate the platform; and in this awkward predicament the Demo- cratic ticket went to disastrous defeat at the November polls. Lincoln was triumphantly chosen by 212 electoral votes against 21 for McClellan; while the House of Representatives was reinforced with a strong Repub- lican majority. This decisive voice of the people had been largely stimulated by the decisive work of the army. Grant, in a series of sternly contested but successful battles, had moved from the Wilderness through Virginia with an irresistible steadiness, and now held Richmond and Petersburg in an iron grip. Sherman had swept in a victorious march from Chattanooga through Georgia, and had Savannah practically in his grasp. Early's raid on Washington had been repulsed; and Sheridan had cleared the Shenandoah Valley. All the omens indicated the early collapse of the Confederate government. It was under these brightening prospects, which gave the President's words of recommendation an overpowering weight, that, in the second session of the thirty-eighth Congress, the House of Representatives returned to the unfinished XIHth Amendment passed by the Senate in the previous session. The question was taken up about the middle of December, and debated at intervals for six weeks with unusual seriousness,
