Alfred H. Stone Collection
Volume: 6

16. Glenni W. Scofield, Amendment of the Constitution to Prohibit Slavery: Speech of Hon. Glenni W. Scofield of Pennsylvania, Delivered in the House of Representatives, January 6, 1865 (Washington, DC: Gibson Brothers, [1865?]. (8 p.)

Speech in favor of the thirteenth amendment, in which the speaker argues that emancipation via a constitutional amendment is the most effective way of resolving the question of whether the Emancipation Proclamation and various state ordinances were constitutional. “It [slavery] has cost the country too much suffering and too much patriotic blood, and is in theory an institution too monstrous, to be permitted to live. The only question is, shall it die now, by constitutional amendment—a single stoke of the ax—or shall it linger in party warfare through a quarter of a century of acrimonious debate, patchwork legislation, and conflicting adjudication?”