while President Buchanan was still in power, were three which deserve special notice: The Acts of the Peace Convention, as it was called; the proposed Amendment to the Constitution from the Committee of Thirty-Three of the House of Representatives; and the organization of the Territories.

The Peace Convention met in Washington in January, 1861, and continued in session several weeks. It was convened on the recommendation of the Legislature of Virginia, and composed of delegates from thirteen free States, and seven slave States; to devise measures which should be recommended to Congress for its adoption, in order to harmonize the views of the two sections of the country and prevent bloodshed. It embraced many of the ablest men of the country, of the different shades of political opinion in each State represented. Although it was a body of no legal authority, yet from the weight of character of the men composing it, presided over by one who had filled the office of President of the United States, and from its humane and patriotic objects, its proceedings were watched with intense interest.

As the result of its deliberations, this Convention presented to Congress the recommendation of an article for ́an amendment to the Constitution, consisting of seven sections. As the questions which divided the country related mainly to slavery, the provisions of this proposed article were framed with special reference to that subject. Among them were the following, some of which were made apparently to the demands and others to the fears of the party in revolt, and nearly all of which were most marked concessions to the whole South. The article restored the Missouri Compromise line, with very serious modifications, on the parallel of latitude of 36° 30'. It admitted slavery into "all the territory" south of that

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line, guaranteeing that the status of slaves then within it should "not be changed," and prohibiting Congress and the Territorial Legislature from passing any law against taking slaves into such territory. It guaranteed the admission of States into the Union from "any Territory North or South of said line," either with or without slavery, as the Constitution of each State should provide. It prohibited such a construction of the Constitution as would give to Congress any power whatever over slavery in any of the States; or to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the consent of Maryland, and without the consent or compensation of the owners; or to prevent any one from taking his slaves to and from the District of Columbia at pleasure; or to interfere with or abolish slavery in any place, either in State or Territory, "under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States;" or to interfere with the domestic slave-trade between the slave States. It also prohibited such a construction of the Constitution as would "prevent any of the States," so disposed, "from enforcing the delivery of fugitives from labor" to their owners; and made it obligatory upon Congress to "provide by law that the United States shall pay to the owner the full value of his fugitive from labor in all cases" where fugitive slaves should be prevented from arrest or rescued from the officers of the law "by violence or intimidation from mobs or riotous assemblages." And finally, it provided that the sections embodying these several guarantees and prohibitions (with two minor exceptions), together with the several parts of the Constitution which now relate to slavery, should "not be amended or abolished, WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF ALL THE STATES." A majority of "three-fourths" only of the States is now requisite for amending any part of the Constitution.

It is perceived at a glance that these propositions of the

]*

Peace Convention made concessions to the whole South in several important particulars. The only question touching slavery which was brought into the Presidential canvass of 1860, was that concerning the Territories, over which Congress has full jurisdiction; and the result of the election was deemed a solemn judgment by the people that the Territories then free should remain free. This was

simply in accordance with a principle which Congress had recognized several times in our history, by prohibiting slavery in portions of the territory of the United States, and these prohibitions had been sanctioned as constitutional by Southern Presidents and by the general acquiescence of all political parties.* But after the revolt commenced, and

Including the action of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confede ration, and the several acts of Congress under the present Constitution, there has been direct legislation many times, prohibitory of or interfering with slavery in the Territorial domain under the immediate jurisdiction of the Government of the United States, between that earlier period and the administration of President Polk. The Continental Congress passed the famous "Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States Northwest of the Ohio River," July 13, 1787. Eight States were represented, and voted on this Ordinance, three of which ere free at the beginning of the rebellion, and five were slave, each State having one ɔte, viz.: Free States, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey; Slave States, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Every one of these States voted for this Ordinance prohibiting slavery, and also every member but one, Mr. Yates, of New York. The Constitution of the United States was adopted in the same year, and in the Convention which framed it were several of the same men who in the Continental Congress passed this Ordinance. One of the earliest acts of the First Congress passed under the Constitution and during the administration of General Washington as President, embracing again several men who had been in the Convention that framed the Constitution, was an act to enforce the Ordinance of 1787, excluding slavery from the Northwest Territory; and in doing this, the fathers who had made the Constitution so recently did not of course suppose they were violating it. Whatever else, therefore, may be said about this Ordinance and the Act of Congress last referred to, and whatever else they may havo included or covered, it is clear that they prohibited slavery in United States Territory; and they so far forth show that, in the judgment of the men who understood the real intent and meaning of the Constitution as well probably as any men who have since lived, it is perfectly within the power of Congress to prohibit slavery in any Territory of the United States whenever in its opinion public policy demands it. Nor has the exercise of such power been pronounced an infraction of the Constitution by the Supreme Court, or been so deemed by any class of public men (and

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solely for the sake of preventing bloodshed, the Peace Convention, in which were some of the leading men of the triumphant party, presented to Congress for adoption into the Constitution, the foregoing provisions, which would secure greater immunities to slavery than it had ever before enjoyed.

The

How were these generous proposals received? leaders of the rebellion scouted them with scorn. Some of them publicly declared, as in the case of the Hon. Lawrence M. Keitt, member of the House of Representatives from South Carolina,-that if a blank parchment were given them on which to write the demands which the North should grant, they would reject it with contempt. Mr. Tyler, the President of the Peace Convention, went home to Virginia, and with other leading men of that State used all his influence against the favorable reception of these proposals by the Legislature. We witnessed, personally, the manner in which these propositions were received in the Senate of the United States. On being reported from the committee to whom they had been referred, we heard five speeches made upon them which consumed the chief portion of one day's session. Messrs. Mason and Hunter, of Virginia, spoke earnestly against

never by any political party), until within a very recent period. The last instance in the series of Congressional prohibitory acts now referred to, occurred as late as the administration of James K. Polk, a Southern President. With a Democratic majority in both Houses of Congress, slavery was prohibited in the bill for the organization of the Territory of Oregon. The Southern doctrine, therefore, that the Constitution carries slavery into the Territories by its own inherent force, and that Congress therefore cannot prohibit but is bound necessarily "to protect" it there by positive law, is a modern notion-very modern. And yet, this question of slavery in the Territories was made a chief element in the South (see next chapter) for urging the people into rebellion. Dr. Thornwell but announces the new doctrine on this point upon which rebel statesmen and the whole South acted,-and it goes beyond the Territories and into the States,-when he says: "The Constitution covers the whole territory of the Union, and throughout that territory has taken slavery under the protection of law."-Southern Presbyterian Review, Jan., 1861.

them, as did also Mr. Pugh, of Ohio, these three men being of the party in the Senate having the majority; while their adoption was earnestly and most eloquently urged by Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, and by Mr. Baker, of California, the latter being of the Republican party, and showing a few months later, in the unfortunate battle at Ball's Bluff, that he was as ready to pour out his heart's blood for his country, when the clash of arms had actually come, as he was to speak eloquently for peace as long as peace was possible.

What good fruit could be expected from the labors of the Peace Convention, when their extreme and generous concessions to the South were spurned with disdain by all those who controlled Southern opinion ?*

The second measure to which we have referred, was taken in the same spirit which actuated the Peace Convention. It was another proposition to amend the Constitution, emanating from the Committee of Thirty-Three of the House of Representatives, of which Mr. Corwin, of Ohio, a

*The late Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. Salmon P. Chase, was a member of this Peace Convention. On visiting his home in Ohio, in October last, addressing bis fellow-citizens in Columbus and again in Cincinnati, he incidentally refers to the labors of this Convention, as follows: "When he left the State, it had been at the invitation and appointment of his friend and most honored successor (Governor Dennison), a Governor, he must here take the opportunity to say, who had worthily discharged the great trusts the people had confided to his hands. In the Peace Conference, to which he had thus been appointed, he and his Northern colleagues had been animated by the sincerest and most anxious desire to preserve the peace and harmony of the Republic. They had no wish save to give effect to the Constitution and laws as they stood. They had assured the delegates from the South that if they would be content with slavery where it was, there was no considerable body of men anywhere who sought to interfere with them. Join us, then,-they had proposed,→ in assuring your people of this plain, indisputable fact, and allay this dangerous excitement. Then call for a National Convention and let the whole country decide on the new claims you prefer. But for that fair, simple proposition, not one single vote from a single slaveholding State was recorded. John Tyler was the Chairman of that Convention. Mr. Seddon, the presert rebel Minister of War, and nearly every other member from the South, was now identified with the rebellion. They did not consent to the proposition, because they had made up their minds before they entered the Convention, to rule the nation or ruin it."--Cincinnati Gazette, Oct. 18, 1863.