After Senator Lyman Trumbull reported the antislavery amendment out of the Judiciary Committee on February 10, 1864, debate on the measure began – but not in Congress. The Senate took more than six weeks to get around to its discussion of Trumbull's resolution. By then, initial deliberation of the issue already had begun in the conversations and correspondence of politicians, legal theorists, political observers, and ordinary Americans. The time between the introduction of the amendment to the Senate and the congressional debates was truly a formative period for the measure and for African American rights in general.

During this period an amendment fever swept across the North. Local political meetings began issuing resolutions calling for constitutional revision on every issue from the abolition of slavery to the establishment of a national religion. Republicans in particular tried to puzzle out not only the meaning of the abolition amendment but the nature of the Constitution itself. Specifically, some began to consider whether one amendment alone would be enough to adjust the Constitution to fit the new state of the nation and the new status of African Americans. Perhaps the time had come to add a slate of amendments – in effect, to rewrite the Constitution. Meanwhile, some within the Democratic party began to take seriously the idea of endorsing the amendment, thereby changing the party's course on emancipation and stealing some wind from Republican sails.