which needed the pledge of additional revenue to induce investment.* Third, new territories were organized under various acts passed toward the close of the session, and Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota, were added to the regions already organized for future States. Not a phrase appeared in these enactments restrictive of the free energy which reached out to occupy the new regions of the sunset; Congress assumed its own functions of supervision, and the Douglas dogma of option to be admitted "with or without slavery" was quietly dropped.† But that which this session was chiefly leaned upon to accomplish went quite unperformed. Attempts to stay disunion, whether by new concessions or by enforcing vigorously the national supremacy, were negative and nerveless. Congress was all at sea, and the two Houses divided. Utter distrust of the President conduced to such a result; for though Buchanan by January had stated to the legislature with some coherency the true alternative, yet the doleful and despairing tone of his recommendations, and his quibbling demurrer besides, over the right to coerce a State, were deadening to all energetic accumulation of force. No legislature will readily invest an Executive with full powers for forcible suppression who doubts his own strength and the resources which government can confide to him, and who quails before rebellious opposition. Buchanan's opening message had discoursed as though the only hope of saving the Union lay in pursuing the South with new guarantees. The patriotic Crittenden lent the last efforts of an honorable life to patching up a * Act March 2, 1861, c. 68. See also Joint Resolution 15 of same date. Thirst for the precious metals, in two at least of these territories was the chief incentive to population. Colorado included parts of Kansas, Nebraska, and Eastern Utah, and the then famous mining region of Pike's Peak, cut off by deserts from the more fertile States, was comprised. 2 Curtis's Buchanan, 419, contends that there was all the more reason for Congress to adopt the President's pacifying suggestions because the United States government was wholly unprepared for civil war. 1861. THE CRITTENDEN PROPOSALS. 1860, 505 new plan under which slavery and freedom might work out their ambitions together. A Senate committee of thirteen, composed of men of different sections and politics, considered this plan together, which drew the general gaze of the country as the "Crittenden December. compromise." Crittenden, who was one of the committee, submitted the scheme to his colleagues on the 22d of December. It offered guarantees against the arbitrary abolition by Congress of slavery in slave States, or in places once lying within such limits, such as forts, navy yards, and the five miles square of the capital, over which the United States gained exclusive jurisdiction; it restrained Federal interference with the inter-State transportation of slaves; it bound the United States to afford recompense for the value of fugitive slaves where local violence prevented their return; and it earnestly advised the offending States of the North to repeal severally their personal liberty acts. But its main feature consisted in an attempt to restore by like constitutional amendment the Missouri compromise line, so as to run the parallel of 36° 30' across the continent as a permanent barrier of territorial demarcation.* Efforts were made through friends of the outgoing administration to get the President-elect to accede to such a compromise; but Lincoln, while signifying how far he would go, to Seward of this committee, was wary of committing his views through any Democratic channel. With unerring sagacity, moreover, he laid his finger upon the weak spot of the proposed extension of the parallel,- that of leaving slavery propagandism still to ferment in Cuba, Mexico, and the region of the isthmus. "I am for no compromise," he wrote in confidence, "which asserts or permits the extension of the institution in soil owned by the nation. And any trick by which the nation is to acquire territory and * See 2 Coleman's Crittenden, c. 13, and the various qualifications under which Everett, Winthrop, and various other statesmen of the day, not in actual service, indorsed the plan. See 2 Curtis's Life of Buchanan, 426, making mention of Duff Green's fruitless mission. then allow some local authority to spread slavery over it is as noxious as any other." * "I take it," he adds, "that to effect some such result as this and put us again on the high road to a slave empire, is the object of all these proposed compromises." But as to fugitive slaves, slavery at the capital, traffic among slave States and whatever else sprung of necessity from the fact that slavery was already among us, he cared but little, so that what might be done were comely and not outrageous.† In the committee of thirteen not only were all propo sitions looking to a better guarantee on freedom's side set aside, but the vital points of the Crittenden compromise were voted down by Davis, Toombs, and the other secession members, as well as by Republicans. Brought forward, moreover, before any fort or government property had been seized, and when no State but South Carolina had seceded, the rapid progress of rebellion and robbery, and the refusal of cotton State leaders to pledge their acquiescence, caused the plan to fail, as perhaps it 1861 must inevitably have done. Defeated in the January committee, and by a test vote in the Senate, Crittenden made various efforts to get his scheme in some way submitted to a direct vote of the people; ‡ and February, finally laid hold of the "Peace Conference" plan, March near the close of the session as a substitute for his own. That plan improved upon his proposed restoration of the Missouri line by placing a strong limitation upon further national expansion. But this, after all, bore but a majority indorsement from the convention which presented it; men of the border States turned wistfully back to Crittenden's original proposal in preference; and while Northern men felt indifferent to the whole scheme, as they perceived no hope that the cotton States could be won back by it, Congress in the last emergency withheld its † Ib. * Letter to Seward, 2 Seward's Life, 504. 42 Curtis's Buchanan, 431. All this would have been ineffectual as a means of amendment to the Constitution, unless sanctioned by two thirds of both Houses. 1861. NO MORE COMPROMISE. 507 aid and countenance.* "No compromise with disloyal slaveholders," was the final result of negation; and all the discussion of these months of writhing suspense served only to bridge a deep and dangerous interval.† One proposed amendment, and only one, was sent out with the constitutional assent of the two Houses, not, however, as a compromise, but a pledge. It originated in the Representatives' branch,‡ and provided that no amendment should be made to the Constitution, authorizing Congress to abolish or interfere within any State with the domestic institution of slavery. In the present sentiment of the country, Republicans, Democrats, and the great mass of loyal citizens at the North, were willing to be bound by such an assurance, hand and foot if need be, in proof that they meant no aggression. But the tide of events which soon followed was irresistible, and the States never acted upon the proposition. Congress had proposed no amendment by its two-thirds vote for nearly three score years; and, curious to relate, the very next which it sent forth made, under God's providence, a rule precisely opposite; which latter amendment, instead, was perfected by the States and planked into the fundamental law.§ We were now on the verge of a terrible civil conflict, costly and sanguinary as the world ever knew. Private citizens, in many instances, saw its approach more clearly than did statesmen long experienced in public life.|| Thirty * Jefferson Davis, the President-elect of the Southern Confederacy, while on his way to Montgomery to be inaugurated, made a speech, February 17, in which he said: “If other States join our confederation, they can freely come in on our terms. Our separation from the old Union is complete. No compromise, no reconstruction can now be entertained." † Congressional Globe. ‡ Here it passed by 133 to 65. A similar proposal had been agreed to by the Senate committee of thirteen. The Senate adopted by 24 to 12. § See Article XIII. of amendments (1865). See, e. g., letter of Amos A. Lawrence, of Massachusetts, December 29, 1860. The first blow struck by any State or local authority at the United States government will arouse and unite the whole Northern people. Partisan faults will be forgotten, and no retroactive legislation can be accomplished." 2 Coleman's Crittenden, 240. one millions of inhabitants, bristling geographically on two sides in hostile array, more than ten times the whole number that had withstood the mother country in the first struggle for American independence, - was a spectacle for the world to contemplate with amazement. Events hurried to the climax of arms before either side was well aware of it. In the free States more especially, so strong had grown the habit of belief in the perpetuity of the Union that men clung tenaciously to the idea that political craft would span the situation as it had often done before; that negotiation, honorable or dishonorable, some new bundle of mutual concessions, would bolster up the old league of social systems. Not until the rash cannon of South Carolina thundered at Fort Sumter was that illusory hope dispelled; and when the defenders of the Union and the avengers of the insulted starry banner sprang to arms, each party to the conflict found foemen worthy of his steel. What splendid prowess of victory, could those ranks have been seen reuniting to march all one way against a common foe. And with such a spirit of deadly earnest in the strife, it was inevitable that they who had invited it, weakened and handicapped by the very system of bondage they had plunged into secession with the foolish hope of preserving, should bite the dust. Numbers, resources, ingenuity, the opinion of the civilized world, were all against them.* And yet the responsibilities of the Union cause at the time when the first Republican President came to assume them must have been appalling. Seven slave States, including Texas, had gone through the form of secession; Arkansas and North Carolina were soon to follow, and Virginia ultimately; and not without internal bitterness and fratricide were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri rescued at the perilous brink. To take the census of 1860, even supposing all the slave States had resisted all the free States, thus making the conflict purely geograph ical, which it never became, - the disparity in population would have stood about twelve millions to nineteen, and that, too, reckoning slaves, who were really an incumbrance, as part of the efficient strength. |