242

ACTION OF CONGRESS ON COMPROMISES.

to incalculable ills;" and for this reason it earnestly invoked "abstinence from all counsels and measures of compulsion toward them.”

After voting thanks to the proprietors of the Hall, who made no charge for its use; to the municipal authorities of Washington City, who agreed to pay all of the expenses of the Convention incurred for printing and stationery; and to the president, "for the dignified and impartial manner” in which he had presided over their deliberations, the delegates listened to a brief farewell address from Mr. Tyler, and then adjourned. On the following day, one hundred guns were fired in Washington in honor of the "Convention Compromise."

The President of the Convention immediately sent a copy of the proposed amendments to the Constitution, adopted by that body, to Vice-President

1861.

Breckinridge, who laid the matter before the Senate." It was March 2, referred to a Committee of Five, consisting of Senators Crittenden, Bigler, Thomson, Seward, and Trumbull, with instructions to report the next day. Mr. Crittenden reported the propositions of the Convention, when Mr. Seward, for himself and Mr. Trumbull, presented as a substitute a joint resolution, that whereas the Legislatures of the States of Kentucky, New Jersey, and Illinois had applied to Congress to call a convention of the States, for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution, the Legislatures of the other States should be invited to consider and express their will on the subject, in pursuance of the fifth Article of the Constitution. A long debate ensued; and, finally, on motion of Senator Douglas, it was decided, by a vote of twenty-five to eleven, to postpone the consideration of the "Guthrie plan" in favor of a proposition of amendment adopted by the House of Representatives, which provided that "no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof." In this the Senate concurred, when the Crittenden Compromise, as we have observed, was called up and rejected.

Thus ended the vain attempts to conciliate the Slave interest by Congres

strued to prevent any of the States, by appropriate legislation, and through the action of their judicial and ministerial officers, from enforcing the delivery of fugitives from labor to the persons to whom such service or labor is due.-[Adopted by a vote of fifteen States against four.]

§ 5. The foreign Slave-trade is hereby forever prohibited; and it shall be the duty of Congress to pass laws to prevent the importation of slaves, coolies, or persons held to service or labor, into the United States and the Territories, from places from beyond the limits thereof.-[Adopted by a vote of sixteen States against five.]

§ 6. The first, third, and fifth sections, together with this section of these amendments, and the third paragraph of the second section of the first Article of the Constitution, and the third paragraph of the second section of the fourth Article thereof, shall not be amended or abolished, without the consent of all the States.[Adopted by a vote of eleven States against nine.]

§ 7. Congress shall provide by law that the United States shall pay to the owner the full value of his fugitive from labor, in all cases where the marshal or other officer, whose duty it was to arrest such fugitive, was prevented from so doing by violence or intimidation from mobs or riotous assemblages, or when, after arrest, such fugitive was rescued by like violence or intimidation, and the owner thereby deprived of the same; and the acceptance of such payment shall preclude the owner from further claim to such fugitive. Congress shall provide by law for securing to the citizens of each State the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.-[Adopted by a vote of twelve States against ten.]

1 See Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention for proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, by Lucius E. Chittenden, one of the delegates, for a full account of all the proceedings of this remarkable Congress.

2 During the session, a delegate from Ohio, the venerable John C. Wright, then seventy-seven years of age, and nearly blind, died quite suddenly. His death occurred on the 18th, when his son, who had been appointed Secretary to the Convention, returned to Ohio with the remains of his father, and J. H. Puleston served the Convention as Secretary during the remainder of the session.

See page 228.

THE ACTION OF THE VIRGINIANS CONSIDERED.

243 sional action. They had demanded changes in the Constitution so as to nationalize Slavery, and would not recede a line from the position they had assumed, while the true men of the nation, determined not only to defend and preserve the Union, but to defend and preserve the Constitution from abasement, were willing to meet them more than half way in efforts to compromise and pacify. The Virginians, in particular, were supercilious, dictatorial, and exacting, as usual. They assumed an air of injured innocence when they saw the precautions taken by the Secretary of War and General Scott to preserve the peace and secure the safety of the National Capital by increasing the military force there; and Tyler seems to have gone so far as to have given President Buchanan to understand that the appearance of National troops as participators in the celebration of Washington's Birthday, would be offensive to the Virginians, February 22, and unfavorable to the harmony of the Peace Convention. They did participate in the festivities of the occasion, for which offense the President, not unaccustomed to a kindly yielding to the wishes of the Slave interest, wrote an apologetic letter to Tyler.'

a

1861.

The failure of the Peace Conference caused much disappointment throughout the country among a large class, who earnestly desired reconciliation, and who had hoped much from its labors; while to many of those who went into the Convention as delegates, and others who had watched the movements of the Oligarchy with care, the result was not unexpected. The demands made in the Virginia resolutions foreshadowed the spirit that was to be met; while the lofty and confident tone of the conspirators in Congress, and the energy with which their friends were at work in the Slave-labor States, promised nothing but failure. It was believed by many then (and events have confirmed the suspicion) that the proposition for the Conference was made in insincerity, and that it was a scheme to give the conspirators more time, while deluding the country with pretended desires for reconciliation, to perfect their plans for securing success in the impending conflict. Henry A. Wise, a chief actor among the Virginia politicians at that time, had declared, as we have seen, two months before:-"Our minds are made up. The South will not wait until the 4th of March. We will be well under arms before then." John Tyler, one of the chief promoters of this Peace move

1 When, in 1862, the National troops went up the Virginia Peninsula, they took possession of "Sherwood Forest," the residence of Tyler, near Charles City Court House, which the owner, one of the leaders among the enemies of his country, had abandoned. There Assistant Adjutant-General W. II. Long found the letter alluded to. The following is a copy —

"WASHINGTON, February 22, 1861.

*MY DEAR SIR:-I found it impossible to prevent two or three companies of the Federal troops from joining in the procession to-day with the volunteers of the District, without giving serious offense to the tens of thousands of people who have assembled to witness the parade.

"The day is the anniversary of Washington's birth-a festive occasion throughout the land-and it has been particularly marked by the House of Representatives.

The troops everywhere else join such processions in honor of the birthday of the Father of our Country, and it would be hard to assign a good reason why they should be excluded from the privilege in the Capital founded by himself. They are here simply as a posse comitatus, to aid the civil authorities, in case of need. Besides, the programme was published in the National Intelligencer of this morning without my personal knowledge-the War Department having considered the celebration of the National Anniversary by the military arm of the Government as a matter of course.

"From your friend, very respectfully,

JAMES BUCHANAN.

•President TYLER."

2

1 See page 43.

· 244

TYLER'S DUPLICITY.-DISUNION ACCEPTED.

ment in Virginia, and President of the Convention, was an advocate of the treason of the South Carolina politicians in 1832-233, and is fully on record as a co-worker with Wise and others against the life of the Republic so early as 1856. On the adjournment of the Peace Convention he hastened to Richmond, where he and Seddon (afterward the so-called Secretary of War of Jefferson Davis) were serenaded, and both made speeches. In his address at the close of the Convention he had just left, Tyler said :-"I cannot but hope and believe that the blessing of God will follow and rest upon the result of your labors, and that such result will bring to our country that quiet and peace which every patriotic heart so earnestly desires. . . . It is probable that the result to which you have arrived is the best that, under all the circumstances, could be expected. So far as in me lies, therefore, I shall recommend its adoption." Thirty-six hours afterward he was in Richmond, and in the speech alluded to he cast off the mask, denounced the Peace Convention as a worthless affair, declared that "the South" had nothing to hope from the Republican party; and then, with all his might, he

...

labored to precipitate Virginia into the vortex of revolution, in which its people suffered terribly.

There were many persons of influence extremely anxious for peace, and preferring a dissolution of the Union (which they hoped would be temporary) to war, who were ready to consent to the secession of the fifteen Slave-labor States in order to secure this great desire of their hearts. Influential Republican journals expressed this willingness; and Lieutenant-General Scott, who knew what were the horrors of war, seems to have contemplated this alternative without dread. In a letter addressed to Governor Seward, on the day preceding Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, he suggested a limitation of the President's field of action in the premises to four measures, namely:-1st, to adopt the Crittenden Compromise; 2d, to collect duties outside of the ports of "seceding States," or blockade them; 3d, to conquer those

a March 3, 1861.

a

This fact was established by letters found when our army moved up the Virginia Peninsula, in 1862. 2 Telegraphic dispatch from Richmond, dated the evening of "Thursday, February 28, 1861," quoted by Victor, in his History of the Southern Rebellion, page 490.

3" Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."-New York Tribune, November 7, 1860. When, in June, 1865, Alexander H. Stephens applied to President Johnson for pardon, he alleged that, among other reasons for espousing the cause of the rebellion, was the fact that the utterances of the Tribune, one of the most influential of the supporters of the Republican party, made him believe that the separation and independence of the Slavelabor States would be granted, and that there could be no war.

On the 224 of January, 1861, Wendell Phillips, the great leader of the radical wing of the Anti-slavery party, in an address in Boston, on the "Political Lessons of the Hour," declared himself to be "a disunion man," and was glad to see South Carolina and other Slave-labor States had practically initiated a disunion movement. He hoped that all the Slave-labor States would leave the Union, and not stand upon the order of their going, but go at once." He denounced the compromise spirit manifested by Mr. Seward and Charles Francis Adams, with much severity of language.-Springfield (Mass.) Republican, January 23, 1861,

GENERAL SCOTT'S SUGGESTIONS.

245

States at the end of a long, expensive, and desolating war, and to no good purpose; and, 4th, to "say to the seceded States, Wayward sisters, go in peace!"

Another earnest pleader against "coercion," which would evidently lead to war, was Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, who gave intellectual power to the electro-magnetic telegraph. He was a conspicuous opponent of the war measures of the Government during the entire conflict. He was made President, as we have seen, of "The American Society for the Promotion of National Union," immediately after the adjournment of the Peace Convention; and he worked zealously for the promotion of measures that might satisfy the demands of the slaveholders. "Before that most lamentable and pregnant error of the attack on Fort Sumter had been committed," says Professor Morse, in a letter to the author of these pages,” “which, indeed, inaugurated actual physical hostilities, and while war was confined to threatening and irritating words between the two sections of the country, there seemed to me to be two methods by which our sectional difficulties might be adjusted without bloodshed, which methods I thus stated in a paper drawn up at the time, when the project of a Flag for the Southern section was under discussion in the journals of the South :

a May 2, 1564.

"The first and most proper mode of adjusting those difficulties is to call a National Convention, in conformity with the provisions of the Constitution; a Convention of the States, to which body should be referred the whole subject of our differences; and then, if but a moiety of the lofty, unselfish,

'This letter, written by the General-in-chief of the Armies of the Republic, on whose advice and skill the incoming President must rely for the support of the integrity of the nation and the vindication of the haws at all hazards, is so remarkable, under the circumstances, that its suggestions are given here in full, as follows:

To meet the extraordinary exigencies of the times, it seems to me that I am guilty of no arrogance in limiting the President's field of selection to one of the four plans of procedure subjoined :—

“L. Throw off the old and assume a new designation-the Union Party; adopt the conciliatory measures proposed by Mr. Crittenden, or the Peace Copvention, and, my life upon it, we shall have no new case of secession; but, on the contrary, an early return of many, if not all the States which have already broken off from the Union. Without some equally benign measure, the remaining Slaveholding States will probably join the Montgomery Confederacy in less than sixty days-when this city [Washingtor], being included in a foreign country, would require a permanent garrison of at least thirty-five thousand troops to protect the Government within it.

*IL Collect the duties on foreign goods outside the ports of which this Government has lost the command, or close such ports by act of Congress, and blockade them.

"IIL Conquer the seceded States by invading armies. No doubt this might be done in two or three years, by a young and able general-a Wolfe, a Desaix, or a Hoche-with three hundred thousand disciplined men (kept up to that number), estimating a third for garrisons, and the loss of a yet greater number by skirmishes, sieges, battles, and Southern fevers. The destruction of life and property on the other side would be frightful, however perfect the moral discipline of the invaders. The conquest completed, at that enormous waste of human life to the North and Northwest, with at least two hundred and fifty millions of dollars added thereto, and cui bono? Fifteen desolated Provinces! not to be brought into harmony with their conquerors, to be held for generations by heavy garrisons, at an expense quadruple the net duties or taxes which it would be possible to extort from them, followed by a Protector or Emperor.

"IV. Say to the seceded States—Wayward sisters, depart in peace !”—Scott's Autobiography, ii. 625. On the solicitation of John Van Buren, of New York, General Scott gave him the original draft of this letter, as an autographic keepsake of a strictly private nature, supposing that he was simply gratifying the wishes of an honorable man. His confidence was betrayed, and this private letter to Mr. Seward was read to a large public meeting of the friends of Horatio Seymour, during the canvass of that leader for the office of Governor of New York. The letter was used as an implied censure of the policy of the Administration of Mr. Lincoln. General Scott, in viudication of himself, then published a Report on the public defenses, which he had submitted to Mr. Buchanan before he left office, which occasioned a spicy newspaper correspondence between these venerable men. See National Intelligencer, October, 1862.

2 See page 207.

246

PROFESSOR MORSE'S PLAN FOR CONCILIATION.

enlarged, and kind disposition manifested in that noble Convention of 1787, which framed our Constitution, be the controlling disposition of the new convention, we may hope for some amicable adjustment. If for any reason this mode cannot be carried out, then the second method is one which circumstances may unhappily force upon us; but even this mode, so lamentable in itself considered, and so extreme-so repulsive to an American heart, if judiciously used, may eventuate in a modified and even stronger Union. This is the temporary yielding to the desire of the South for a separate confederacy; in other words, an assent to negotiations for a temporary dissolution of the present Union. My object in this mode is to secure, in the end, a more permanent perpetual Union. I well know that this is a startling proposition, and may seem to involve a paradox; but look at it calmly and carefully, and understand what is involved in such an assent. It involves, as a paramount consideration, a total cessation on our part of the irritating process which for thirty years has been in operation against the South. If this system of vituperation cannot be quelled because we have 'freedom of speech;' if we cannot refrain from the use of exasperating and opprobious language toward our brethren, and from offensive intermeddling with their domestic affairs, then, of course, the plan fails, and so will all others for a true union. If we cannot tamê our tongues, neither union nor peace with neighbors, nor domestic tranquillity in our homes, can be expected."

This earnest apostle of Peace then proceeds to notice some of the formidable difficulties in the way, such as fixing the boundary-line between the "two confederacies," and the weighty necessity of maintaining, in peaceful relations, a standing military army and an army of custom house officials. These considerations, he believed (assuming that both parties should never lose their temper), would cause a perception of the necessity for compromise, "which embodies a sentiment vital to the existence of any society." There then would be the difficulty of an equitable distribution of the public property, as well as an agreement upon the terms of a treaty "offensive and defensive between the confederacies. Coercion," he said, "of one State by another, or of one Federated Union by another Federated Union," was not to be thought of. "The idea is so fruitful of crime and disaster that no man, in his right mind, can entertain it for a moment."

Supposing all these matters to be definitely settled to the perfect satisfaction of all parties, the question naturally arose in the mind of the writer, "What is to become of the Flag of the Union ?" He answered, "The Southern section is now agitating the question of a device for their distinctive flag. Cannot this question of flags be so settled as to aid in a future Union? I think it can. If the country can be divided, why not the flag? The Stars and Stripes is the flag in which we all have a deep and the selfsame interest. It is hallowed by the common victories of our several wars. We all have sacred associations clustering around it in common, and, therefore, if we must be two nations, neither nation can lay exclusive claim to it without manifest injustice and offense to the other. Neither will consent to throw it aside altogether for a new and strange device, with no associations of the past to hallow it.

"The most obvious solution of the difficulties which spring up in this respect is to divide the old flag, giving half to each. It may be done, and