into our lines," thereby making emancipation an accomplished fact before a potential next administration could take office. Thirteenth Amendment When Lincoln accepted the nomination for the Union party for president in June 1864, he called for the first time for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to immediately abolish slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. He wrote in his letter of acceptance that "it would make a fitting and necessary conclusion" to the war and would permanently join the causes of "Liberty and Union." He won re-election on this platform in November, and in December, 1864, Lincoln worked to have the House approve the amendment. When the House passed the 13th amendment on January 31, 1865, Lincoln signed the amendment, although this was not a legal requirement, and said in a speech the next day, "He thought all would bear him witness that he had never shrunk from doing all that he could to eradicate slavery by issuing an emancipation proclamation." He pointed out that the emancipation proclamation did not complete the task of eradicating slavery; "But this amendment is a King's cure for all the evils [of slavery]." Second inaugural address Lincoln, having gotten the constitutional amendment to abolish slavery through Congress, began his second term. He discussed slavery throughout his second inaugural address, describing it as not only the cause of the Civil War, but claiming that, as an offense to God, it drew God's righteous judgment against the entire nation. Compensated emancipation: buy out the slave owners The Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, provided no compensation to slave owners, but previously, President Lincoln had made numerous proposals to the loyal border states to agree to "compensated emancipation." None did. The only area of the country that would ever receive compensated emancipation would be Washington, D.C. Because Washington, D.C., was under federal jurisdiction, Congress was able pass the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act. President Lincoln advocated that slave owners be compensated for emancipated slaves. On March 6, 1862, President Lincoln, in a message to the U.S. Congress, proposed that Congress adopt a Joint Resolution stating that "any state which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery" should be given "pecuniary aid ... to compensate for the inconveniences public and private, produced by such a change of system". Congress adopted the resolution. On July 12, 1862, President Lincoln, in a