638 tion of that day. Thus far no sign of pity for the slave, nor of justice to the free black has appeared. States, Congresses, conventions, Presidents and Courts of Law, the powers of the Republic, have dealt with the millions of the African race in bondage, and the half million in precarious freedom, as commodities in the market, as property increasing in value or declining, with the acts of legislatures and the decrees of courts. Thus far every plan for saving the Union has had for its chief purpose the more complete subjugation, the more hopeless bondage and inferiority of the unfortunate race. Even the aggressive friends of Union have demanded little more than the statu quo. Wade would not hint at making slavery in a State insecure, nor at this time at the price of peace would Seward refuse to have it established there, beyond the reach of Congress forever.1 It was the new States that should be free; it was the Territories from which the institution should be excluded. No one has hinted at the abolition of slavery as the price of Union. Thus far, every plan has proposed the permanency of slavery. The Republic should be made a slaveholding Republic forever.

A SLAVEHOLDING REPUBLIC FOREVER.

It is with great interest, therefore, that we turn to the Republican House, to learn what amendment it will propose as the saving compromise of 1861.

As soon as the President's message was read, on the fourth of December, several motions were made to refer it to a special committee. McClernand of Illinois moved for a committee with duties like those which the Senate had given to the Committee of Thirteen, but by a vote of one hundred and forty-five to thirty-eight the House

1 See his resolution to this effect proposed to the Committee of Thirteen (Report Com., No. 288. Senate, 36th Congress, 2d Session, p. 11).

THE COMMITTEE OF THIRTY-THREE.

639

adopted the motion of Boteler, of Virginia, to raise a Committee of Thirty-three, one member from each State, "with leave to report at any time." Boteler, who belonged, as he said, to "the Southern opposition party,' made his motion "to afford those upon the other side of the House an opportunity to state to us and to the country whether they meant to tender to us the olive branch of peace or the sword." 1 The nays to Boteler's motion came from Republicans who were radical opponents of slavery, and among them were the strong Ohio leaders, Ashley, Bingham and Sherman; Burlingame, of Massachusetts; Grow, Hickman and Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, and Owen Lovejoy and Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois. But the Republicans were not an abolition party. They stood for the limitation, not the extinction of slavery, yet, as time proved, limitation meant extinction, and the fate of the new party was bound up with that of slavery.

No sooner was the Committee of Thirty-three agreed upon than the Representatives, like their colleagues in the other Chamber, began an open confession of their opinions, and first the Southern members: "I was not sent here for the purpose of making any compromise or to patch up existing difficulties," said Singleton of Mississippi; "I decline voting on the pending proposition for the resaon that the Legislature of the State has called a convention to take into consideration the subject matter not before this House. I leave to the sovereign State of Mississippi to determine for herself her present Federal relations." For the same reasons Jones, of Georgia, declined to vote. "The people of Florida," said Hawkins, "have resolved to determine in convention, in their sovereign capacity, the time, place and manner of

1 Globe, December 4, 1860, p. 6; January 10, 1861, p. 316.

640

ATTITUDE OF THE SOUTH.

redress. It is not for me to take any action on the subject. The day of compromise has passed," but he was stopped at calls of "Order" from all parts of the House. "Believing that a State has a right to secede," said Clopton, of Alabama, "and that the only remedy for present evils is secession, I will not hold out any delusive hope or sanction any temporizing policy." Moreover, Alabama, like her sister States, was to settle the matter in convention. "The South Carolina delegation," said Miles, "have not voted on this question because they conceive they have no interest in it. We consider our State as already withdrawn from the Confederacy in everything except form." This was thirteen days before the South Carolina convention met, but the equitably minded Miles considered that done which he thought ought to be done. "As my State of Alabama intends following South Carolina out of the Union by the tenth of January next, I pay no attention to any action taken in this body," said Pugh, and his name stands first among the signers to the address of "certain Southern members of Congress" to their constituents, issued ten days later, and was followed by the names of Clopter, Jones, Hawkins, Singleton and Miles.1 William Pennington, of New Jersey, the Speaker, was a Republican of moderate anti-slavery opinions. He named the committee on the sixth, with Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, Chairman. All its members were representative men, so that the Committee of Thirty-three, like that of thirteen, contained men of all parties, as they were in the autumn of 1860, and of both parties, as they were becoming by the pressure of events. Some of the committee were destined to yet greater prominence in public life, and of these were Charles Francis Adams, of 1 Globe, December 4, 1860, p. 7; the address has already been given in full, in this chapter, p. 616.

MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE.

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Massachusetts, soon to be appointed by Lincoln minister plenipotentiary and envoy extraordinary to England, and there to perform a service for his country that ranks him with Franklin among American diplomatists; Orris S. Ferry, of Cincinnati, recently elected to Congress, but destined to an honorable career in both Houses; Justin S. Morrill, of Vermont, whose public life, beginning in 1855, was to continue longer than that of any of his colleagues, and in its years of legislative experience in both Houses to outnumber those of any other American; William Windom, of Minnesota, destined to serve as Secretary of the Treasury under two Presidents, and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, intense, fervid in patriotism and brilliant in debate. The radical, Southern members were soon to leave Congress and enter upon the disastrous secession movement. Warren Winslow was to vote for the ordinance of secession of his State, as a member of the North Carolina convention of May, 1861. But no member of the committee surpassed its chairman, Thomas Corwin, in public experience, political sagacity, legal acumen and honorable fame. His public life extended back to the days of the Missouri Compromise. He had served as Governor of Ohio, and had served five years in the Senate when President Fillmore, in 1850, called him into his cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury. He, too, with Charles Francis Adams, was soon to enter the diplomatic service, and his career as minister to Mexico during the troublous years of civil war sustained a reputation which remains to this day quite unequaled for eloquence, wit and political leadership.1

1 The Committee consisted of Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, Chairman; John S. Millson, Va.; Charles F. Adams, Mass.; Warren Winslow, N. C.; James Humphrey, N. Y.; William W. Boyce,

642

CONDUCT OF THE SOUTHERN MEMBERS.

Though some of the Southern members of the committee were radical pro-slavery men, none of the Northern members were abolitionists. Morrill may be said to have held opinions more closely approaching abolitionism than did any other of the thirty-three. But he came from the State which had fewest negroes, and in that respect, he illustrated Douglas's favorite saying that the most radical anti-slavery men came from regions where a black man was rarely seen, and the most extreme agitators for a more stringent fugitive slave law from the parts of the South from which no slave ever escaped.

Hawkins, as soon as the names of the committee were announced, asked to be excused. "The time for compromise has passed," said he, and he declared that his action was the result of more than twenty years' consideration. But the matter went over till the tenth, when he gave his reasons for being excused. Florida was to meet in convention on the third of January, "then to act in her sovereign capacity, a peer of thirty-two other sovereignties." Though her population had been retarded by untoward circumstances, she was none the less sovereign; "entitled to the same political consideration as France, and Portugal, the same as Russia, and in this Confed

S. C.; James H. Campbell, Pa.; Peter E. Love, Ga.; Orris S. Ferry, Conn.; Henry Winter Davis, Md.; Christopher Robinson, R. I.; William G. Whitely, Del.; Mason W. Tappan, N. H.; John L. N. Stratton, N. J.; Francis M. Bristo, Ky.; Justin S. Morrill, Vt.; Thomas A. R. Nelson, Tenn.; William McKee Dunn, Ind.; Miles Taylor, La.; Reuben Davis, Miss.; William Kellogg, Ill.; George S. Houston, Ala.; Freeman H. Morse, Maine; John S. Phelps, Missouri; Albert Rust, Ark.; William A. Howard, Mich.; George S. Hawkins, Fla.; Andrew J. Hamilton, Texas; Cadwalader C. Washburne, Wis.; Samuel R. Curtis, Ia.; John C. Busch, Cal.; William Windom, Minn.

Globe, December 6, 1860, p. 22,