662

CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM'S PLAN.

by the voluntary division of some of the slave States, into two or more. These visionary measures were suggested on the twelfth of December. A third, even more fantastical, came from Vallandigham, on the seventh of February, after a dozen ordinary propositions had followed the list already mentioned. The Union should be divided into four great sections, the North, the West, the Pacific and the South. On demand of one-third of the Senators of any section, on any measure to which the concurrence of the House was necessary, except on a question of adjournment, a vote should be had by sections, and a majority of the Senators from each section voting should be necessary to the passage of the measure. Each State should have two electors at large; but the others should be chosen by districts. A majority of all the electors in all the four sections should be necessary to the choice of President and Vice-President, and a majority of the States in each when the election should go to the House. The term of the President and Vice-President should be six years, and they should not be re-eligible, except by votes of two-thirds of all the electors of each section. Congress should by law provide for an election of these officials in a failure of the House and the Senate to choose a President and a Vice-President. No State should be allowed to secede without the consent of the legislatures of all the States of the section to which it belonged. In case of secession, Congress should arrange the terms. Neither Congress nor a Territorial legislature should have power to interfere with the right of the citizens of any State to migrate to another, with all rights of property secure. New States, not less than thirty thousand square miles in area, and having the Congressional ratio of population should be admitted from time to time under

A DIVIDED HOUSE.

665

signed by Ferry,1 dissented from the majority report because it contained matter to which Congress ought not to give its sanction. The seventh, objected because the report was deluding and misleading and did not have the support of those who framed its resolutions.2

So the committee was a house divided against itself. The minority reports were signed by fourteen members and half as many more from the Gulf States had absented themselves from the meetings. The report which Corwin made was therefore, in effect, a minority report also; so that the House resolutions, and various amendments more or less conflicting, had their counterpart in the reports of the committee appointed to bring the House to a harmonious settlement of all difficulties. Corwin had no faith in the report he had made. At heart he despaired of preserving the Union. "Treason," he wrote at this time, to the President-elect, "Treason is in the air around us everywhere. It goes by the name of patriotism. Men in Congress boldly avow it, and the public offices are full of acknowledged secessionists." The report of the committee was made the order of the day for the twenty-first, to be continued from day to day till disposed of. But on that day it was not taken up. Soon after the House was in order, the Speaker, by unanimous consent, laid before it a communication from the Alabama delegation announcing the secession of the State from the Union, and their withdrawal from further deliberations of the House. It was not the first news of the kind. The South Carolina members had sent such a communication of the action of their State on the twenty-fourth of December. The Mississippi del

1 Id., p. 1.

2 Signed by Love and Hamilton; Id., p. 2.

* Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln, III, 218.

666

PROGRESS OF SECESSION.

egates had sent their notice on the twelfth of January. Now, Alabama had seceded. Cobb, a member from Alabama, remained till the thirteenth of January, when, having submitted the ordinance of secession of that State, and its invitation to the slaveholding States to assemble in Convention at Montgomery for the purpose of organizing a Southern Confederacy, he formally withdrew from the House. The Georgia members announced the secession of their State and withdrew on the twenty-third, and the Louisiana delegation on the fifth of February.1

Thus while the Committee of Thirty-three was working zealously to preserve the Union by concessions to the South, by guarantees of its "peculiar rights," the Gulf States were seceding from the Union with greater zeal and organizing a Confederacy of the slaveholding States. Of what use then conciliation, if the South would not have it? But even yet the Southern leaders were not taken seriously in the North. As soon as they discovered, which would be soon, that Lincoln was not an abolitionist and that they and their property and their peculiar rights were as safe under him as under Pierce or Buchanan, they would quiet down, and matters would go on much as they had for thirty years. Another compromise was wanted; that was all.

So the House continued to hear many propositions for adjusting affairs. The Crittenden resolutions came up again and again, and, it may be said, they ever had a backward look. If the Missouri Compromise had lasted thirty years, and then was wantonly repealed, or by a court dictum declared unconstitutional, and yet everybody knew that it kept the peace for thirty years, why not insert the principle of that compromise in the Constitution, where it would be safe from repeal, either by Con1 See the Congressional Globes of these dates.

gress or the Supreme Court? But as delegation after delegation withdrew from Congress, secession began to be looked upon as a fact. Where would it end? There were discontented sections in the North; would they secede ? Was America on the verge of anarchy? And so speech after speech was made, the greater number in the House, on the constitutionality of secession; on its consequences; some members defending it, others, speaking with the directness of Wade and Trumbull. But the new members, fresh from the campaign that had resulted in the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, were not given to silence in the House as their party associates were in the Senate. The Senate was Democratic and speech there need not be wasted. The House was Republican and from the members of the new party in the House, the coming administration and the people would soon be choosing men for high office. It was the party with the forward look and not as yet troubled by a long history.

Though many propositions looking to a constitutional amendment were made, none were adopted by the House. Finally, on the twenty-seventh of February, Corwin moved as a substitute for the amendment which the Committee of Thirty-three had advised:

Article XIII-"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." 1

Doubtless the substitute was Corwin's own, for it agreed with his political opinions and was, in constitutional form, the plank in the Chicago platform, which he had quoted in the preface to his report on the 14th of January. Immediately a parliamentary struggle ensued. John Hick

1 Journal, H. R., 1860-61, p. 416.

668

LINCOLN AND HAMLIN NOTIFIED.

man, of Pennsylvania, a leading abolitionist, moved that the resolution be laid on the table, but the House decided against him, one hundred and twenty-two to sixty-seven. By a vote of one hundred and twenty to sixty-one it then agreed to the amendment. Being engrossed and accordingly read the third time, the vote was taken on its passage; one hundred and twenty responded yea, seventy-one nay, two-thirds not voting in the affirmative, so the resolution was defeated. On the following day David Kilgore, of Indiana, having given notice, when the resolution was defeated, that he should move for a reconsideration, the question of reconsideration was carried by one hundred and twenty-eight to sixty-five. The joint resolution being thus before the House again, it was put to a vote and passed by one hundred and thirtythree to sixty-five.1 This was one more than a two-thirds vote of the members present. It was then ordered that the concurrence of the Senate be requested, and the Clerk, John W. Forney, bore the message and the joint resolution to the other Chamber. It happened that on the day when the resolution passed the House, Elihu B. Washburne, of Illinois, the member on the joint committee appointed to inform Lincoln and Hamlin of their election as President and Vice President, reported them as accepting the trust, "now rendered doubly difficult by existing perils," said Lincoln. But he accepted the Presidency "with a firm reliance on the strength of our free government, and the ultimate loyalty of the people to the just principles upon which it is founded, and, above all, an unshaken faith in the Supreme Ruler of nations.” "It shall be my earnest effort," said he, "to discharge my

1 Id., p. 426. Globe, 1263, 1264, 1284, 1285.