And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

Lincoln believed the Emancipation Proclamation was the most significant achievement of the century. If the 13th Amendment was to be ratified by Congress, it would end the debate about abolition in the country, effectively making it the permanent law of the land. In order to pass the legislation, there were reports that the Lincoln administration did whatever was necessary, including bribery for votes. Meacham recalls Thaddeus Stevens saying, “The greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America” (354). The 13th Amendment was ratified in Congress on January 31, 1865.

The end of the war was also fast approaching. Though hostilities were still active, peace overtures and negotiations were in the works. Lincoln believed that the Confederates states should be permitted to reenter the Union as they were before the war: not as slaveholding but in the same practical relationship to the federal government, with representation in Congress (356). According to Meacham, Lincoln even drafted a “$400 million compensation plan for slave owners in seceded states” (357). This would be in exchange for reentering an antislavery Union. Many in the Confederacy were still very unhappy and unrelenting.