On February 1, 1865, the day after Congress passed the resolution for the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, a group of celebrants urged President Lincoln to speak on the occasion. Calling the amendment “a King’s cure for all the evils,” Lincoln saw it as essential not just to ending slavery but to truly concluding the Civil War.

Michael Vorenberg is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment—a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and a basis for Spielberg’s 2012 film, Lincoln. He has written extensively on legal and constitutional history and teaches at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island.

He has lectured widely on the Civil War, Lincoln, and the U.S. Constitution, with writings in major publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post.