February began with a “continual scene of revelry” on White River south of the National Road bridge as hundreds of ladies and gentlemen took advantage of the ice over the waterway to engage in the “exhilarating sport of skating” before the impending thaw. For those citizens wanting a more genteel amusement, Davis’ Great Alliance – Minstrels and Silver Cornet Band entertained with “jokes, burlesques and comic delineations,” including some splendid vocalists and instrumental music of “rare excellence,” at Masonic Hall. Stationers Todd & Carmichael, 8 N. Pennsylvania St, announced having a “splendid assortment” of Valentines on hand.
The Journal triumphed the conclusion of “the long struggle in Congress over passage of an amendment prohibiting slavery throughout the United States” when the United States House of Representatives adopted the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The Indiana delegation split with Representatives Schuyler Colfax, Ebenezer Dumont, George W. Julian, and Godlove S. Orth voting in favor of the amendment, while Representatives Joseph K. Edgerton, John Law, James A. Cravens, Henry W. Harrington, and William S. Holman voted against the amendment. Representatives James F. McDowell and Daniel W. Voorhees were absent. The U. S. Senate had earlier approved the amendment, so it was sent to the states for ratification. At 10:20 p.m. on the night of Monday, February 13 before a large audience of citizens crowding the State House chamber, the Indiana House of Representatives ratified the amendment by a vote of 57-29. As the vote was announced, enthusiastic cheers rung out from the assembled people accompanied by a cannonade from the artillery on the State House Square that could be heard as far south as Seymour.
At mid-month, a large number of clergymen and citizens from several denominations met at Roberts Chapel to organize a movement seeking to amend the Indiana state constitution and the United States Constitution that would “recognize Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government” and declare the United States “a Christian nation.”
The state produced a pamphlet in German on the “inducements to emigrate to Indiana.” Any German citizen in the state can have the pamphlet sent gratis to any relative or friend in Europe. The Journal called upon the wealthy men of the city to build houses that the mechanic, laborer, and clerk can afford to rent or pay for “if you wish your city to prosper.” The Citizens’ Street Railway Co has completed about four miles of track, and work will begin on an additional five miles of track when weather permits. The principle city streets will soon be threaded by a railway “affording a most complete, convenient and cheap mode if traveling” from one part of the city to another in cars “as luxuriant as a parlor.”
The recruiting for the newly authorized Indiana regiments was going well. By mid-month, 8,690 men, including a large number of veterans (men who have “smelt gunpowder”) were filling the ranks not only of the new units, but of regiments now in the field. The last Saturday of the month there was “considerable excitement” as the wheel turned and names were drawn as the draft sought to fill the deficiency in enlistments. Eyes scanned the list of the names appearing in the Journal columns, and those selected were met with, “How are you, conscript?” Mayor Caven announced to a “large and enthusiastic” crowd of citizens and draftees at a meeting at the Tabernacle that 792 names were drawn to meet the city’s deficit of 396 men.
In his report for January, Brigadier General Asahel A. Stone, quartermaster general and acting commissary general of Indiana, reported that the State Bakery supplied 126 families of soldiers with “regular daily rations of bread” totaling 7,954 loaves. An examination of prisoners at Camp Morton found only 366 prisoners willing to be exchanged; the other 1,516 chose to avoid the devastation of their homeland.