o devoid of malice, as the President.

Henry Winter Davis at once moved that that part of the message be
referred to a special committee of which he was chairman, and on
February 15 reported a bill whose preamble declared the Confederate
States completely out of the Union; prescribing a totally different
method of reestablishing loyal State governments, one of the essentials
being the prohibition of slavery. Congress rejected the preamble, but
after extensive debate accepted the bill, which breathed the same spirit
throughout. The measure was also finally acceded to in the Senate, and
came to Mr. Lincoln for signature in the closing hours of the session.
He laid it aside and went on with other business, despite the evident
anxiety of several friends, who feared his failure to indorse it would
lose the Republicans many votes in the Northwest. In stating his
attitude to his cabinet he said:

"This bill and the position of these gentlemen seem to me, in asserting
that the insurrectionary States are no longer in the Union, to make the
fatal admission that States, whenever they please, may of their own
motion dissolve their connection with the Union. Now we cannot survive
that admission, I am convinced. If that be true, I am not President;
these gentlemen are not Congress. I have laboriously endeavored to avoid
that question ever since it first began to be mooted, and thus to avoid
confusion and disturbance in our own councils. It was to obviate this
question that I earnestly favored the movement for an amendment to the
Constitution abolishing slavery, which passed the Senate and failed in
the House. I thought it much better, if it were possible, to restore the
Union without the necessity of a violent quarrel among its friends as to
whether certain States have been in or out of the Union during the
war--a merely metaphysical question and one unnecessary to be forced
into discussion."

But though every member of the cabinet agreed with him, he foresaw the
importance of the step he had resolved to take, and its possible
disastrous consequences to himself. When some one said that the threats
of the radicals were without foundation, and that the people would not
bolt their ticket on a question of metaphysics, he answered:

"If they choose to make a point upon this, I do not doubt that they can
do harm. They have never been friendly to me. At all events, I must keep
some consciousness of being somewhere near right. I must keep