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President Lincoln worked hard for the 13th amendment.

According to the New York Tribune he sure did!

"Mr. Corwin's amendment to the Constitution prohibiting Congress from interfering with Slavery in the States finally prevailed by the bare Constitutional majority. It is known that Mr. Lincoln favored its passage" - New York Tribune, March 5, 1861

"Mr. Lincoln has advised that the Republicans of his State should support Mr. Corwin's constitutional amendment...prohibiting Congress from interfering with the domestic institutions of the South." - New York Tribune, March 2, 1861

I knew about the Crittenden Amendment, but you've led me to learn about the Corwin Amendment. Thanks.

It's interesting that the folks who condemn defenders of secession as being partisans of slavery fail to observe also that without secession, slavery would not have ended in the United States as soon as it did (because a non-amendable amendment would have strengthened its legal position).

One can argue for days about the theoretical legality of secession (as many here do), or the merits of various commanders and political leaders, but it is hard to deny that in terms of practical outcomes and achieving of stated goals, secession was a disaster for the country, North and South. Ironically, the only large category of folks who were better off as the result of secession would be the slaves (assuming, as I do that they preferred not to be slaves). Certainly that result was not intended by the secessionists, but as an historical fact that was the result.

President Lincoln worked hard for the 13th amendment.
According to the New York Tribune he sure did!
"Mr. Corwin's amendment to the Constitution prohibiting Congress from interfering with Slavery in the States finally prevailed by the bare Constitutional majority. It is known that Mr. Lincoln favored its passage" - New York Tribune, March 5, 1861

You know the story well enough.

Why try and deceive people?

"But the final version of the Thirteenth Amendment--the one ending slavery--has an interesting story of its own. Passed during the Civil War years, when southern congressional representatives were not present for debate, one would think today that it must have easily passed both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Not true. As a matter of fact, although passed in April 1864 by the Senate, with a vote of 38 to 6, the required two-thirds majority was defeated in the House of Representatives by a vote of 93 to 65. Abolishing slavery was almost exclusively a Republican party effort--only four Democrats voted for it.

It was then that President Abraham Lincoln took an active role in pushing it through congress. He insisted that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment be added to the Republican party platform for the upcoming presidential elections. He used all of his political skill and influence to convince additional democrats to support the amendments' passage. His efforts finally met with success, when the House passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119-56. Finally, Lincoln supported those congressmen that insisted southern state legislatures must adopt the Thirteenth Amendment before their states would be allowed to return with full rights to Congress.

The fact that Lincoln had difficulty in gaining passage of the amendment towards the closing months of the war and after his Emancipation Proclamation had been in effect 12 full months, is illustrative. There was still a reasonably large body of the northern people, or at least their elected representatives, that were either indifferent towards, or directly opposed to, freeing the slaves."

http://members.tripod.com/~greatamericanhistory/gr02011.htm

But President wanted, and worked hard for, equal rights for blacks.

Walt