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594 Emancipation adopted in West Virginia. [1862 also succeeded in electing a governor in the great State of New York, whose stubborn partisanship gave the administration much annoyance when enforcing the Draft Law in the following year. Nevertheless, the elections once over, moderate men who had opposed military emancipation began gradually to accept it as one of the inevitable events of war, to be submitted to along with its other calamities. In the House of Representatives the Republicans promptly took measures to defeat a resolution declaring the proclamation to be an unconstitutional and dangerous war-measure, and, by a test vote of 78 to 51, passed a resolution sustaining it in strong affirmative terms. In his annual message of December 1, 1862, the President once more elaborately discussed and urgently recommended his policy of compensated emancipation, proposing a constitutional amendment con- taining provisions that all slaves who should have enjoyed actual freedom by the chances of war at any time before the end of the rebellion should remain for ever free; but that all loyal owners, and all States which should abolish the institution before 1900, should receive compensation from the United States. While this recommendation did not take effect in legislation, the strong logic of the President's argument and the fervency of his exhortation in favour of shortening the war, and dividing its necessary sacrifices between the people of both sections, made a powerful impression upon the public mind, preparing the country for the final military decree of which the September proclamation was the preliminary announcement. Meanwhile as a joint result of war, congressional legislation, and executive action, the first step in actual emancipation took place. Loyal West Virginia, having by the spontaneous movement of her people repudiated secession, formed a new State and adopted a con- stitution, and applied for admission to the Union. Congress accepted all the provisions of the new constitution which she presented, except that relating to slaves, which was a simple prohibition against their being brought into the State for permanent residence. By way of insisting on a more radical reform, Congress embodied in its Act to admit the new State a condition precedent requiring it to adopt a system of gradual emancipation to begin on July 4, 1863; slave children born thereafter to be free, slaves under ten years of age to become free at twenty-one, and slaves under twenty-one to become free at twenty-five. The Senate passed the Act on July 14, 1862, and the House at the next session, on December 10, 1862. The constitu- tionality of this Act of Admission was thoroughly discussed by President Lincoln's Cabinet in written opinions, during the last week of December; and the President signed it on the 31st. In due time West Virginia accepted the system of gradual emancipation imposed by Congress; and the State was admitted on June 20, 1863. Finally, under the impulse of the growing spirit of progress, the system of