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1864] The Thirteenth Amendment proposed. 599 the conduct of the war, and turned to him with great confidence as the fittest man to nominate for the next presidential term, both on account of his remarkable qualities of statesmanship and because the experience he had gained would enable him better than any other to carry the struggle for national life and freedom to a successful issue. The feeble intrigues of Secretary Chase and General Fremont to supplant him in his own party suffered an early blight. In the national con- vention of the Republican party, held at Baltimore on June 7, 1864, the roll-call on nomination showed an undivided vote for Abraham Lincoln in every State delegation except that of Missouri, which, under instructions, gave its first ballot to Grant, but immediately changed and made Lincoln's nomination unanimous. While Lincoln's prudent but tactful management of the slavery question in the past had been perhaps the most influential cause of this unanimity, his counsel and influence were already shaping the final solution of this most perplexing problem of national destiny. In the preceding session of Congress a joint resolution had been introduced, perfected, and passed in the Senate, proposing the Xlllth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, viz. : " 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. 1 ' In the House of Representatives, however, the party attitude of members was such that the necessary two-thirds vote could not then be obtained for it, and it went over as unfinished business. But Congressional and legislative discussion had advanced public opinion to a point which found emphatic expression in the Republican National Convention. The preliminary speeches foreshadowed the de- claration embodied in the third resolution of the platform, which approved all the Acts hitherto directed against the "institution," and declared in favour of an amendment to the Constitution terminating and for ever prohibiting the existence of slavery in the United States. To the Committee that notified him of his nomination, Lincoln gave a special and hearty approval of this resolution of the platform. "Such an amendment," said he, "to the Constitution, as is now pro- posed, became a fitting and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause. Such alone can meet and cover all cavils. Now the unconditional Union men, north and south, perceive its importance and embrace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union let us labour to give it legal form and practical effect." And to a friend in confi- dential conversation he remarked that it was he who had suggested to Senator Morgan to put the subject into his opening speech when he called the Convention to order. In his annual message of December 6, 1864, President Lincoln argued with emphasis in favour of completing the enactment of the en. xvin.