Its minor provisions might be regarded as temporary in their nature, but its leading provisions are permanent and are essential to the vitality of a true republic.

Even those which may be held as temporary deeply affect more than one generation of American citizens, and are of themselves sufficiently important to justify a great struggle for their adoption.
It was certainly of inestimable concern to the honor of the country that those who had shed their blood and those who had given their treasure for its defense, should have their claims upon the national justice placed beyond the whim, or the caprice, or the malice of an accidental majority in Congress.

Nor would it have been wise to leave open to those who in the conflict of arms had lost their slaves, the temptation to besiege Congress and the Legislatures of their States for compensation.

Such an opportunity would have been a menace to the public credit, and would have proved a constant source of corruption.
The Republican therefore said, "We shall incorporate the right of the soldier to repayment, in the very Constitution of the Republic; and shall in the same solemn manner decree that as slavery instigated the drawing of the sword against the life of the nation, and justly perished by the sword, its assumed value shall not be placed upon the free people of the United States as a mortgage whose payment may be exacted from their property and their toil." Against these just provisions, which in their nature are limited as to time, the Democrats in Congress and in every Legislature of the Union recorded an absolutely unanimous vote.
Another provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, temporary in its application, indeed necessarily limited to the existing generation, was demanded by the Republicans.

The great mass of those engaged in the Rebellion were pardoned the moment their arms were laid down.