Constitutional Amendment

The Proposed Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting Slavery will beautifully harmonize with the great ends it was ordered to secure, namely:

To effect a more perfect Union.
Establish justice.
Insure domestic tranquility.
Provide for the common defence.
Promote the general welfare, and
Secure the blessings of liberty (not of slavery) to us and our posterity.

From the beginning even until now, slavery has been at perpetual war with each and all of these designs, for it has ever tended to and threatened disunion; it established injustice to the fugitive slave act; it has incessantly disturbed domestic tranquility; it has always endangered the common defence; and has caused the present civil war. In brief, its history and spirit are that of irreconsilable, irrepressible, necessary, hostility to every object proposed in the Preamble to the Constitution, to the fundamental doctrines of the Declaration of Independence. Happily this great charter of National Government provides for its amendment, which can now be readily affected, for the last four years has created a revolution in the public mind, which will not only permit, but demands as a “necessity,” this onward step in civilization.

The Constitution provides that a convention for proposing amendments shall be called by Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, or on the application of two thirds of the several States. The spirit of Liberty now commands those two thirds, and the convention will be called. The proposed amendments must be ratified by three fourths of the States, either by their Legislatures or State conventions, as the one or other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress. There would seem to be no doubt that, by the time the subject goes to the State[s] for settlement the requisite number can be obtained. The question, brought home to the people in a form which nobody can disapprove, will call forth the real opinion of the masses on slavery, unmixed with any political prejudices and passions; and that opinion must be on the side of liberty. – Boston Transcript.

– Published in The Union Sentinel, Osceola, Iowa, Friday, December 30, 1864