After a consideration of the whole subject, the majority of the committee made a report embodying nearly every objectionable proposition which had been submitted. The report included a resolution asking the States to repeal all their personal-liberty bills, in order that the recapture and return of fugitive slaves should in no degree be obstructed. It included an amendment to the Const.i.tution as proposed by Mr. Adams. It offered to admit New Mexico, which then embraced Arizona, immediately, with its slave-code as adopted by the Territorial Legislature,--thus confirming and a.s.suring its permanent character as a slave State. It proposed to amend the Fugitive-slave Law by providing that the right to freedom of an alleged fugitive should be tried in the slave State from which he was accused of fleeing, rather than in the free State where he was seized. It proposed, according to the demand of Mr.

Toombs, that a law should be enacted in which all offenses against slave property by persons fleeing to other States should be tried where the offense was committed, making the slave-code, in effect, the test of the criminality of the act,--an act which, in its essential character, might frequently be one of charity and good will.

These propositions had the precise effect which, in cooler moments, their authors would have antic.i.p.ated. They humiliated the North without appeasing or satisfying the South. Five Southern members made a minority report in which still further concessions were demanded. They submitted what was known as the Crittenden Compromise, demanding six amendments to the Const.i.tution for the avowed purpose of placing slavery under the guardianship and protection of the National Government, and, after the example of Mr. Adams's proposed amendment, intrenching the inst.i.tution where agitation could not disturb it, where legislation could not affect it, where amendments to the Const.i.tution would be powerless to touch it.

--The first amendment proposed that in "all the territory of the United States south of the old Missouri line, either now held or to be hereafter acquired, the slavery of the African race is recognized as existing, not to be interfered with by Congress, but to be protected as property by all the departments of the Territorial Government during its continuance."

--The second amendment declared that "Congress shall have no power to interfere with slavery even in those places under its exclusive jurisdiction in the slave States."

--The third amendment took away from Congress the exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia, as guarantied in the Const.i.tution, declaring that Congress should "never interfere with slavery in the District, except with the consent of Virginia and Maryland, so long as it exists in the State of Virginia or Maryland, nor without the consent of the inhabitants of the District, nor without just compensation for the slaves. Nor shall Congress prohibit officers of the General Government nor members of Congress from bringing with them their slaves to the District, holding them there during the time their duties may require them to remain, and afterwards taking them from the District."

--The fourth amendment prohibited Congress from interfering with the transportation of slaves from one State to another, or from one State to any Territory south of the Missouri line, whether that transportation be by land, by navigable river, or by the sea.

--The fifth amendment conferred upon Congress the power, and prescribed its duty, to provide for the payment to the owner of a fugitive slave his full value from the National Treasury, in all cases where the marshal was prevented from arresting said fugitive by violence or intimidation, or where the fugitive, after arrest, was rescued by force.

--The sixth amendment provided for a perpetual existence of the five amendments just quoted, by placing them beyond the power of the people to change or revise--declaring that "no future amendment to the Const.i.tution shall ever be pa.s.sed that shall affect any provision of the five amendments just recited; that the provision in the original Const.i.tution which guaranties the count of three- fifths of the slaves in the basis of representation, shall never be changed by any amendment; that no amendment shall ever be made which alters or impairs the original provision for the recovery of fugitives from service; that no amendment shall be made that shall ever permit Congress to interfere in any way with slavery in the State where it may be permitted."

PROPOSITIONS OF COMPROMISE.

Before Mr. Corwin submitted his report, Mr. Charles Francis Adams appears to have become disgusted with his own proposition for the amendment of the Const.i.tution. This disgust was caused by the refusal of the Southern members of the committee to agree to the declaration that "peaceful acquiescence in the election of the Chief Magistrate, accomplished in accordance with every legal and const.i.tutional requirement, is the paramount duty of every good citizen of the United States." The proposition of Mr. Adams to this effect was amended by Mr. Millson of Virginia, who subst.i.tuted "high and imperative" for "paramount." But even in this modified form, seven Southern members asked to be excused from voting upon it, and Mr. Adams seems wisely to have thought that "if there could not be agreement on a proposition so fundamental and essential as that, it was of no use to seek any remedy for the existence of evils by legislation of Congress." Mr. Adams, therefore, made a report dissenting from the committee, stating that he had changed his course, and now declined to recommend the very measures which he had in good faith offered. This was on the 14th of January.

On the 31st of January Mr. Adams changed his course again, and returned to the unqualified support of the measures proposed by the committee. In his speech of that date, he asked, addressing the South, "How stands the case, then? We offer to settle the question finally in all of the present territory that you claim, by giving you every chance of establishing Slavery that you have any right to require of us. You decline to take the offer because you fear it will do you no good. Slavery will not go there. Why require protection where you will have nothing to protect? . . .

All you appear to desire it is for New Mexico. Nothing else is left. Yet you will not accept New Mexico at once, because ten years of experience have proved to you that protection has been of no use thus far." These are somewhat extraordinary words in 1861 from a man who in 1850 had, as a Conscience Whig, declined to support Mr. Webster for making in advance the same statements, and for submitting arguments that were substantially identical.

During the debate, in which Mr. Adams arraigned the Disunionists of the South with considerable power, he was somewhat embarra.s.sed by a Southern member who quoted resolutions which Mr. Adams had introduced in the Ma.s.sachusetts Legislature in 1844, and which had been pa.s.sed by that body, respecting the annexation of Texas. He had declared therein, just as Josiah Quincy had declared with reference to the acquisition of Louisiana, "that the power to unite an independent foreign State with the United States is not among the powers delegated to the General Government by the Const.i.tution of the United States." He declared, further, that "the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, faithful to the compact between the people of the United States, according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood and acceded to by them, is sincerely anxious for its preservation; and that it is determined, as it doubts not other States are, to submit to undelegated powers in no body of men on earth; and that the project of the annexation of Texas, unless resisted on the threshold, may tend to drive these States into a dissolution of the Union." This resolution of Mr. Adams was unfortunate in every respect for his position in the debate on that day, since it really included and justified every const.i.tutional heresy entertained by Mr. Calhoun, and claimed for the State of Ma.s.sachusetts every power of secession or dissolution which was now a.s.serted by the Southern States.

Mr. Webster, in one of his ablest speeches (in reply to Mr. Calhoun in February, 1833), devoted his great powers to demonstrating that the Const.i.tution was not "a compact," and that the people of the States had not "acceded" to it. Mr. Adams had unfortunately used the two words which, according to Mr. Webster, belonged only to the lexicon of disloyalty. "If," said Mr. Webster, "in adopting the Const.i.tution nothing was done but _acceding to a compact_, nothing would seem necessary in order to break it up but to _secede from the same compact_." "Accession," as a word applied to political a.s.sociation, implies coming into a league, treaty, or confederacy. "Secession" implied departing from such league or confederacy. Mr. Adams had further declared that the people of Ma.s.sachusetts are "faithful to the compact according to the plain meaning and intent in which it was understood by them." But according to Mr. Webster, and in accordance with the principles absolutely essential to maintain a const.i.tutional government, Ma.s.sachusetts had no part or lot in deciding the question which Mr. Adams's resolution covered. If Ma.s.sachusetts reserved to herself the right to determine the sense in which she understood her accession to the compact of the Federal Government, she gave full warrant to South Carolina to determine for herself the sense of the compact to which she acceded, and therefore justified the action of the Southern States. Whether Texas was const.i.tutionally or unconst.i.tutionally annexed to the Union was no more to be decided by Ma.s.sachusetts than the const.i.tutionality of the prohibition of Slavery north of the Missouri line was to be decided by South Carolina. The position of Mr. Adams in 1844 had therefore returned to plague its inventor in 1861, and in a certain sense to weaken the position of the loyal States.

REPORT OF COMPROMISE COMMITTEE.

Various reports were submitted by members of the minority, of no special significance, differing often on immaterial points. The members from California and Oregon who represented the Breckinridge party of the North, united in a recommendation for a general convention to be called under the authority of the Const.i.tution, to propose such amendments as would heal all existing differences, and afford sufficient guaranties to the growing interests of the government and people. The only bold words spoken were in the able report by Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin and Mason W. Tappan of New Hampshire. They made an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis of the situation in plain language. They reviewed ably and conclusively the report made by Mr. Corwin for the majority of the committee, and spoke as became men who represented the justice and the power of a great Republic. They vindicated the conduct of the General Government, and showed that the Union was not to be preserved by compromises nor by sacrifice of principle. They regarded the discontent and hostility in the South as without just cause, and intimated that those States might purchase at a high price some valuable information to be learned only in the school of experience. They embodied their entire recommendations in a single resolution in which they declared that the provisions of the Const.i.tution were ample for the preservation of the Union; that it needed to be obeyed rather than amended; and that "our extrication from present difficulties is to be looked for in efforts to preserve and protect the public property and enforce the laws, rather than in new guaranties for particular interests, or in compromises, or concessions to unreasonable demands."

When the report of the committee of thirty-three came before the House for action, the series of resolution were first tested by a motion to lay upon the table, which was defeated by a vote of nearly two to one; and after angry debate running through several days, the resolutions, which were only directory in their character, were adopted by a large majority. When the const.i.tutional amendment was reached, Mr. Corwin subst.i.tuted for that which was originally draughted by Mr. Adams, an amendment declaring that "no amendment shall be made to the Const.i.tution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish, or interfere, within any State, with the domestic inst.i.tutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." This was adopted by a vote of 133 to 65. It was numbered as the thirteenth amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution, and would have made slavery perpetual in the United States, so far as any influence or power of the National Government could affect it. It intrenched slavery securely in the organic law of the land, and elevated the privilege of the slave-holder beyond that of the owner of any other species of property. It received the votes of a large number of Republicans who were then and afterwards prominent in the councils of the party.

Among the most distinguished were Mr. Sherman of Ohio, Mr. Colfax, Mr. C. F. Adams, Mr. Howard of Michigan, Mr. Windom of Minnesota, and Messrs. Moorhead and McPherson of Pennsylvania. The sixty-five negative votes were all Republicans whom the excitement of the hour did not drag from their moorings, and many of whom have since done, as they had done before, signal service for their party and their country. Thaddeus Stevens was at their head, and he was sustained by the two Washburns, by Bingham of Ohio, by Roscoe Conkling, by Anson Burlingame, by Owen Lovejoy, by Marston and Tappan of New Hampshire, by Galusha A. Grow, by Reuben E. Fenton, and by others who, if less conspicuous, were not less deserving.

When the proposition reached the Senate, it was adopted by a vote of 24 to 12, precisely the requisite two-thirds. Among those who aided in carrying it were Hunter of Virginia, Nicholson of Tennessee, Sebastian of Arkansas, and Gwin of California, who soon after proceeded to join the Rebellion. Eight Republican senators, Anthony of Rhode Island, Baker of Oregon, Dixon and Foster of Connecticut, Grimes and Harlan of Iowa, Morrill of Maine, and Ten Eyck of New Jersey, voted in the affirmative. Only twelve out of twenty-five Republican senators voted in the negative. Mr. Seward, Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Collamer, and others among the weightiest Republican leaders are not recorded as voting. As pairs were not announced, it may be presumed that they consented to the pa.s.sage of the amendment.

Before the resolution could reach the States for concurrence, either by convention or Legislature, the evidences of Southern outbreak had so increased that all such efforts at conciliation were seen to be vain, and in the end they proved hurtful. Only two States, Maryland and Ohio, gave their a.s.sent to the amendment. In the New- England States it was rejected, and in many it was not acted upon.

Whoever reads the thirteenth amendment to the Const.i.tution as it now stands, and compares it with the one which was proposed by the Thirty-sixth Congress, will be struck with the rapid revolution of public sentiment, and will not be at a loss to draw some useful lessons as to the course of public opinion and the conduct of public men in times of high excitement.

THE CRITTENDEN COMPROMISE.

The propositions of the committee of thirty-three to admit New Mexico as a slave State, and to amend the Fugitive-slave Law, were both pa.s.sed by the House, but were defeated or not acted upon in the Senate. In that body the efforts of the friends of conciliation were mainly confined to the Crittenden compromise which has already been outlined in the proceedings of the House. But for the eminent respectability of the venerable senator from Kentucky, his propositions would have had short consideration. They were of a character not to be entertained by a free people. They dealt wholly in the finding of new guaranties for slavery, without attempting to intimate the possible necessity of new guaranties for freedom. Perhaps the most vicious feature in this whole series of proposed amendments to the Const.i.tution was the guaranty of slavery against the power of Congress in all territory of the United States south of 36 30'.

This offered a premium upon the acquisition of territory, and was an encouragement to schemes of aggression against friendly powers south of the United States, which would always have had the sympathy and support of one-half the Union, and could hardly have been resisted by any moral power of the General Government. It would have opened anew the old struggle for equality between free States and slave States, and would in all probability have led the country to war within three years from its adoption,--war with Mexico for the border States of that Republic, war with Spain for the acquisition of Cuba. This would have followed as matter of policy with Southern leaders, whether they intended to abide in the Union, or whether they intended, at some more advantageous and opportune moment, to secede from it. If they concluded to remain, their political power in the National Government would have been greatly increased from the acquisition of new States. If they desired to secede, they would have acquired a much more formidable strength and vastly larger area by the addition of Southern territory to which the Crittenden propositions would not only have invited but driven them.

While these propositions were under discussion, Mr. Clark of New Hampshire offered as a subst.i.tute the resolution with which Messrs.

Washburn and Tappan had closed their report in the House,--a resolution of which Mr. Clark was the author, and which he had previously submitted to the consideration of the Senate. The test question in the Senate was whether Mr. Clark's resolution should be subst.i.tuted for the Crittenden proposition, and this was carried by a vote of 25 to 23. The twenty-five were all Republicans; the twenty-three were all Democrats, except Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland, who had been supporters of Mr. Bell in the Presidential election. It is a fact worthy of note that six senators from the extreme Southern States sat in their seats and refused to vote on the proposition. Had they chosen they could have defeated the action. But they believed, with a certain consistency and wisdom, that no measure could be of value to the South unless it had the concurrence of senators from the North; and with this motive they imposed upon the Republicans of the Senate the responsibility of deciding the Crittenden proposition. It was matter of congratulation with Republicans who did not lose their judgment in that trying season, that the Senate stood firmly against the fatal compromise which was urged by so many strong influences.

Much was forgiven for other unwise concessions, so long as this was definitely rejected.

PROPOSITIONS OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE.

Meanwhile a body of men had a.s.sembled in the National Capital upon the invitation of the State of Virginia, for the purpose of making an earnest effort to adjust the unhappy controversy. The Peace Congress, as it was termed, came together in the spirit in which the Const.i.tution was originally formed. Its members professed, and no doubt felt, an earnest desire to afford to the slave-holding States, consistently with the principles of the Const.i.tution, adequate guaranties for the security of their rights. Virginia's proposition was brought to the National Capital by Ex-President John Tyler, deputed by his State to that honorable duty. In response to the invitation twenty-one States, fourteen free and seven slave, had sent delegates, who a.s.sembled in Washington on the 4th of February, 1861. After remaining in session some three weeks, the Peace Congress submitted an article of amendment to the Const.i.tution, contained in seven sections, making as many distinct propositions.

--The first section restored the line of the Missouri Compromise as it was before the repeal in 1854.

--The second provided that no further acquisition of territory should be made except by the consent of a majority of all the senators from the slave-holding States and a majority of all the senators from the free States.

--The third declared that no amendment to the Const.i.tution shall be made interfering with Slavery in the States, nor shall Congress prohibit it in the District of Columbia, nor interfere with the inter-State slave-trade, nor place any higher rate of taxation on slaves than upon land. At the same time it abolished the slave- trade in the District of Columbia.

--The fourth provided that no construction of the Const.i.tution shall prevent any of the States aiding, by appropriate legislation, in the arrest and delivery of fugitive slaves.

--The fifth forever prohibited the foreign slave-trade.

--The sixth declared that the amendments to the Const.i.tution herein proposed shall not be abolished or changed without the consent of all the States.

--The seventh provided for the payment from the National Treasury for all fugitive slaves whose recapture is prevented by violence.

These propositions met with little favor in either branch of Congress.

Mr. Crittenden, finding that he could not pa.s.s his own resolutions, endeavored to subst.i.tute these, but could induce only six senators to concur with him. In the House there was no action whatever upon the report. The venerable Ex-President was chosen to preside over the deliberations of the conference, but was understood not to approve the recommendations. Far as they went, they had not gone far enough to satisfy the demands of Virginia, and still less the demands of the States which had already seceded. It is a curious circ.u.mstance that one of the delegates from Pennsylvania, Mr. J.

Henry Puleston, was not a citizen of the United States, but a subject of Queen Victoria, and is now (1884), and has been for several years, a member of the British Parliament.

To complete the anomalies and surprises of that session of Congress, it is necessary to recall the fact, that, with a Republican majority in both branches, Acts organizing the Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada were pa.s.sed without containing a word of prohibition on the subject of slavery. From the day that the administration of Mr. Polk began its career of foreign acquisition, the question of slavery in the Territories had been a subject of controversy between political parties. When the Missouri Compromise was repealed, and the Territories of the United States north of the line of 36 30' were left without slavery inhibition or restriction, the agitation began which ended in the overthrow of the Democratic party and the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States. It will therefore always remain as one of the singular contradictions in the political history of the country, that, after seven years of almost exclusive agitation on this one question, the Republicans, the first time they had the power as a distinctive political organization to enforce the cardinal article of their political creed, quietly and unanimously abandoned it.

And the abandoned it without a word of explanation. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wade and Mr. Chandler, the most radical men in the Senate on the Republican side, sat still and allowed the bill to be pa.s.sed precisely as reported by James S. Green of Missouri, who had been the ablest defender of the Breckinridge Democracy in that body.

In the House, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Owen Lovejoy, the Washburns, and all the other radical Republicans vouchsafed no word explanatory of this extraordinary change of position.

COLORADO, DAKOTA, AND NEVADA.

If it be said in defense of this course that all the Territories lay north of 36 30', and were therefore in no danger of slavery, it only introduces fresh embarra.s.sment by discrediting the action of the Republican party in regard to Kansas, and discrediting the earnest and persistent action of the anti-slavery Whigs and Free- Soilers, who in 1848 successfully insisted upon embodying the Wilmot Proviso in the Act organizing the Territory of Oregon. Surely, if an anti-slavery restriction were needed for Oregon, it was needed for Dakota which lay in the same lat.i.tude. Beyond doubt, if the Territory of Kansas required a prohibition against slavery, the Territory of Colorado and the Territory of Nevada, which lay as far south, needed it also. To allege that they could secure the President's approval of the bills in the form in which they were pa.s.sed, and that Mr. Buchanan would veto each and every one of them if an anti-slavery proviso were embodied, is to give but a poor excuse, for, five days after the bills received the Executive signature, Mr. Buchanan went out of office, and Abraham Lincoln was installed as President.

If, indeed, it be fairly and frankly admitted, as was the fact, that receding from the anti-slavery position was part of the conciliation policy of the hour, and that the Republicans did it the more readily because they had full faith that slavery never could secure a foothold in any of the Territories named, it must be likewise admitted that the Republican party took precisely the same ground held by Mr. Webster in 1850, and acted from precisely the same motives that inspired the 7th of March speech. Mr. Webster maintained for New Mexico only what Mr. Sumner now admitted for Colorado and Nevada. Mr. Webster acted from the same considerations that now influenced and controlled the judgment of Mr. Seward. As matter of historic justice, the Republicans who waived the anti- slavery restriction should at least have offered and recorded their apology for any animadversions they had made upon the course of Mr. Webster ten years before. Every prominent Republican senator who agreed in 1861 to abandon the principle of the Wilmot Proviso in organizing the Territories of Colorado and Nevada, had, in 1850, heaped reproach upon Mr. Webster for not insisting upon the same principle for the same territory. Between the words of Mr. Seward and Mr. Sumner in the one crisis and their votes in the other, there is a discrepancy for which it would have been well to leave on record an adequate explanation. The danger to the Union, in which they found a good reason for receding from the anti-slavery restriction on the Territories, had been cruelly denied to Mr.

Webster as a justifying motive. They found in him only a guilty recreancy to sacred principle for the same act which in themselves was inspired by devotion to the Union.

It was certainly a day of triumph for Mr. Douglas. He was justified in his boast that, after all the bitter agitation which followed the pa.s.sage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the Republicans adopted his principle and practically applied its provisions in the first Territory which they had the power to organize. Mr. Douglas had been deprived of his chairmanship of the Committee of Territories by the Southern leaders, and his place had been given to James S.

Green of Missouri. His victory therefore was complete when Mr.

Seward waived the anti-slavery guaranty on behalf of the Republicans, and when Mr. Green waived the pro-slavery guaranty on behalf of the Breckinridge Democracy. It was the apotheosis of Popular Sovereignty, and Mr. Douglas was pardonable even for an excessive display of self-gratulation over an event so suggestive and so instructive. Mr. Grow, the chairman of Territories in the House, frankly stated that he had agreed with Mr. Green, chairman of Territories in the Senate, that there should be no reference whatever to the question of slavery in any of the Territorial bills. It cannot be denied that this action of the Republican party was a severe reflection upon that prolonged agitation for prohibition of slavery in the Territories by Congressional enactment. A surrender of the principle with due explanation of the reasons, properly recorded for the instruction of those who should come after, would have left the Republican party in far better position than did the precipitate retreat which they made without a word of apology, without an attempt at justification.

If receding from the anti-slavery creed of the Republican party was intended as a conciliation to the South, the men who made the movement ought to have seen that it would prove ineffectual. The Republicans no more clearly perceived that they risked nothing on the question of slavery in organizing those Territories without restriction, than the Southern leaders perceived that they would gain nothing by it. In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird. The South had realized their inability to compete with Northern emigration by their experience in attempting to wrest Kansas from the control of free labor. They were not to be deluded now by a nominal equality of rights in Territories where, in a long contest for supremacy, they were sure to be outnumbered, outvoted, and finally excluded by organic enactment. The political agitation and the sentimental feeling on this question were therefore exposed on both sides,--the North frankly confessing that they did not desire a Congressional restriction against slavery, and the South as frankly conceding that the demand they had so loudly made for admission to the Territories was really worth nothing to the inst.i.tution of slavery. The whole controversy over the Territories, as remarked by a witty representative from the South, related to an imaginary negro in an impossible place.

James Stephens Green, who was so prominent in this legislation, who prepared and reported the bills, and who was followed by a unanimous Senate, terminated his public service on the day Mr.

Lincoln was inaugurated. He was then but forty-four years of age, and had served only four years in the Senate. He died soon after.

No man among his contemporaries had made so profound an impression in so short a time. He was a very strong debater. He had peers, but no master, in the Senate. Mr. Green on the one side and Mr.

Fessenden on the other were the senators whom Douglas most disliked to meet, and who were the best fitted in readiness, in accuracy, in logic, to meet him. Douglas rarely had a debate with either in which he did not lose his temper, and to lose one's temper in debate is generally to lose one's cause. Green had done more than any other man in Missouri to break down the power of Thomas H. Benton as a leader of the Democracy. His arraignment of Benton before the people of Missouri in 1849, when he was but thirty-two years of age, was one of the most aggressive and successful warfares in our political annals. His premature death was a loss to the country.

He was endowed with rare powers which, rightly directed, would have led him to eminence in the public service.

NORTHERN DEMORALIZATION.

It would be unjust to the senators and representatives in Congress to leave the impression that their unavailing efforts at conciliating the South were any thing more or less than a compliance with a popular demand which overspread the free States. As soon as the election was decided in favor of Mr. Lincoln, and the secession movement began to develop in the South, tens of thousands of those who had voted for the Republican candidates became affrighted at the result of their work. This was especially true in the Middle States, and to a very considerable extent in New England. Munic.i.p.al elections throughout the North during the ensuing winter showed a great falling-off in Republican strength. There was, indeed, in every free State what might, in the political nomenclature of the day, be termed an utter demoralization of the Republican party.

The Southern States were going farther than the people had believed was possible. The wolf which had been so long used to scare, seemed at last to have come. Disunion, which had been so much threatened and so little executed, seemed now to the vision of the mult.i.tude an accomplished fact,--a fact which inspired a large majority of the Northern people with a sentiment of terror, and imparted to their political faith an appearance of weakness and irresolution.