Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/173

 forty-three were Union-Republicans, to forty-one opposition. The Senate, after the election of the following winter stood forty Union-Republicans to eleven opposition. This gave the supporters of the Administration a majority of more than two-thirds in each branch of Congress.

The result of this election removed all doubt in the minds of the mass of the people, both in the North and the South, as to the final result of the terrible Civil War that had for more than three years desolated the country. The leaders on both sides clearly saw what the end must be. The officers of the Confederate Government and of its armies lost hope in the success of their cause, although they were impelled by their positions to continue the hopeless struggle six months longer. When the news of the overwhelming approval of the prosecution of the war was flashed over the civilized world, it was accepted as the death blow to the Southern Confederacy.

When Congress assembled on the 6th of December, 1864, President Lincoln, in his message, said:

“Judging by the recent canvass and its results the purpose of the people in the loyal States, to maintain the integrity of the Union, was never more firm, nor more nearly unanimous than now … In affording the people a fair opportunity of showing to one another, and to the world, this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast value to the National cause.

“In presenting the abandonment of armed resistance to the national authority on the part of the insurgents, as the only indispensable condition to ending the war on part of the Government, I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery … While I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation, nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that Proclamation, or any acts of Congress. If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty to reënslave such persons, another, not I, must be their instrument to perform it.

“In stating a condition of peace, I mean simply to say that the war will cease on part of the Government whenever it shall have ceased on part of those who began it.”

The President strongly urged the passage by the House of the Constitutional Amendment (which had already