This, however, was mere matter of form. The question was
really settled when Mr. Colfax announced the vote of the
representatives.[78]
FOOTNOTES:
[77] A constitutional amendment requires for its passage a two thirds
vote in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and ratification by
three fourths of the States.
[78] Thirteenth Amendment. _First_: Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction. _Second_: Congress shall have power to
enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FALL OF RICHMOND, AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN
From the Capitol, where he had spoken his inaugural on March 4, 1865,
Mr. Lincoln came back to the White House with less than five weeks of
life before him; yet for those scant weeks most men would have gladly
exchanged their full lifetimes. To the nation they came fraught with all
the intoxicating triumph of victory; but upon the President they laid
the vast responsibility of rightly shaping and using success; and it was
far less easy to end the war wisely than it had been to conduct it
vigorously. Two populations, with numbers and resources amply enough for
two powerful nations, after four years of sanguinary, relentless
conflict, in which each side had been inspired and upheld by a faith
like that of the first crusaders, were now to be reunited as fellow
citizens, and to be fused into a homogeneous body politic based upon
universal suffrage.
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