Had the Rebels
been shrewd enough, within the hundred days, to take the President at
his word, he would have stood pledged to maintain their institution,
and his proclamation, instead of being a charter of freedom, would
have been a license for slaveholding.
The proclamation did not, in fact, whatever it may have otherwise
accomplished at the time it was issued, liberate a single slave. What
is more, slavery as an institution was altogether too securely rooted
in our system to be abolished by proclamation. The talk of such a
thing greatly belittles the magnitude of the task that was performed.
Its removal required a long preliminary work, involving, as is made to
appear in previous chapters of this work, almost incalculable toil and
sacrifice, to be followed by an enormous expenditure of blood and
treasure. Its practical extinguishment was the work of the army, while
its legal extirpation was accomplished by Congress and the
Legislatures of the States in adopting the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Federal Constitution, which forbids all slaveholding. That amendment
was a production of Congress and not of the Executive, whose official
approval was not even required to make it legally effective.
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