Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Slavery's Constitution
- 2 Freedom's Constitution
- 3 Facing Freedom
- 4 Debating Freedom
- 5 The Key Note of Freedom
- 6 The War within a War: Emancipation and the Election of 1864
- 7 A King's Cure
- 8 The Contested Legacy of Constitutional Freedom
- Appendix: Votes on Antislavery Amendment
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Facing Freedom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Slavery's Constitution
- 2 Freedom's Constitution
- 3 Facing Freedom
- 4 Debating Freedom
- 5 The Key Note of Freedom
- 6 The War within a War: Emancipation and the Election of 1864
- 7 A King's Cure
- 8 The Contested Legacy of Constitutional Freedom
- Appendix: Votes on Antislavery Amendment
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
After Senator Lyman Trumbull reported the antislavery amendment out of the Judiciary Committee on February 10, 1864, debate on the measure began – but not in Congress. The Senate took more than six weeks to get around to its discussion of Trumbull's resolution. By then, initial deliberation of the issue already had begun in the conversations and correspondence of politicians, legal theorists, political observers, and ordinary Americans. The time between the introduction of the amendment to the Senate and the congressional debates was truly a formative period for the measure and for African American rights in general.
During this period an amendment fever swept across the North. Local political meetings began issuing resolutions calling for constitutional revision on every issue from the abolition of slavery to the establishment of a national religion. Republicans in particular tried to puzzle out not only the meaning of the abolition amendment but the nature of the Constitution itself. Specifically, some began to consider whether one amendment alone would be enough to adjust the Constitution to fit the new state of the nation and the new status of African Americans. Perhaps the time had come to add a slate of amendments – in effect, to rewrite the Constitution. Meanwhile, some within the Democratic party began to take seriously the idea of endorsing the amendment, thereby changing the party's course on emancipation and stealing some wind from Republican sails.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Final FreedomThe Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, pp. 61 - 88Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001