CHAPTER XII.

Congress in the Winter of 1860-61.--The North offers Many Concessions to the South.--Spirit of Conciliation.--Committee of Thirteen in the Senate.--Committee of Thirty-three in the House.--Disagreement of Senate Committee.--Propositions submitted to House Committee.-- Thomas Corwin's Measure.--Henry Winter Davis.--Justin S. Morrill-- Mr. Houston of Alabama.--Constitutional Amendment proposed by Charles Francis Adams.--Report of the Committee of Thirty-three.-- Objectionable Measures proposed.--Minority Report by Southern Members.--The Crittenden Compromise proposed.--Details of that Compromise.--Mr. Adams's Double Change of Ground.--An Old Resolution of the Massachusetts Legislature.--Mr. Webster's Criticism Pertinent. --Various Minority Reports.--The California Members.--Washburn and Tappan.--Amendment to the Constitution passed by the House.--By the Senate also.--New Mexico.--The Fugitive-slave Law.--Mr. Clark of New Hampshire.--Peace Congress.--Invited by Virginia.--Assembles in Washington.--Peace Measures proposed.--They meet no Favor in Congress.--Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada originated. --Prohibition of Slavery abandoned.--Republicans in Congress do not ask it.--Explanation required.--James S. Green of Missouri.-- His Character as a Debater.--Northern Republicans frightened at their own Success.--Anxious for a Compromise.--Dread of Disunion. --Northern Democrats.--Dangerous Course pursued by them.--General Demoralization of Northern Sentiment.

While the Secession leaders were engaged in their schemes for the disruption of the National Government and the formation of a new confederacy, Congress was employing every effort to arrest the Disunion tendency by making new concessions, and offering new guaranties to the offended power of the South. If the wild precipitation of the Southern leaders must be condemned, the compromising course of the majority in each branch of Congress will not escape censure,--censure for misjudgment, not for wrong intention. The anxiety in both Senate and House to do something which should allay the excitement in the slave-holding section served only to develop and increase its exasperation and its resolution. A man is never so aggressively bold as when he finds his opponent afraid of him; and the efforts, however well meant, of the National Congress in the winter of 1860-61 undoubtedly impressed the South with a still further conviction of the timidity of the North, and with a certainty that the new confederacy would be able to organize without resistance, and to dissolve the Union without war.

COMMITTEES OF CONCILIATION.

Congress had no sooner convened in December, 1860, and received the message of Mr. Buchanan, with its elaborate argument that the National Government possessed no power to coerce a State, than in each branch special committees of conciliation were appointed. They were not so termed in the resolutions of the Senate and House, but their mission was solely one of conciliation. They were charged with the duty of giving extraordinary assurances that Slavery was not to be disturbed, and of devising measures which might persuade Southern men against the rashness on which they seemed bent. In the Senate they raised a committee of thirteen, representing the number of the original States of the Union. In the House the committee was composed of thirty-three members, representing the number of States then existing. In the Senate, Mr. Powell of Kentucky was chairman of the committee of thirteen, which was composed of seven Democrats, five Republicans, and the venerable Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky, who belonged to neither party. It contained the most eminent men in the Senate of all shades of political opinion. In the House, Thomas Corwin was made chairman, with a majority of Republicans of the more conservative type, a minority of Democrats, and Mr. Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who held a position similar to that occupied by Mr. Crittenden in the Senate.

The Senate committee promptly disagreed, and before the close of December reported to the Senate their inability to come to any conclusion. The committee of thirty-three was more fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, in being able to arrive at a series of conclusions which tended only to lower the tone of Northern opinion without in the least degree appeasing the wrath of the South. The record of that committee is one which cannot be reviewed with pride or satisfaction by any citizen of a State that was loyal to the Union. Every form of compromise which could be suggested, every concession of Northern prejudice and every surrender of Northern pride, was urged upon the committee. The measures proposed to the committee by members of the House were very numerous, and those suggested by the members of the committee themselves seemed designed to meet every complaint made by the most extreme Southern agitators. The propositions submitted would in the aggregate fill a large volume, but a selection from the mass will indicate the spirit which had taken possession of Congress.

Mr. Corwin of Ohio wished a declaration from Congress that it was "highly inexpedient to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia unless with the consent of the States of Maryland and Virginia." Mr. Winter Davis suggested the Congress should request the States to revise their statutes with a view to repeal all personal-liberty bills, and further that the Fugitive-slave Law be so amended as to secure trial by jury to the fugitive slave, not in the free State where he was arrested, but in the slave State to which he might be taken. Mr. Morrill of Vermont offered a resolution declaring that all accessions of foreign territory shall hereafter be made by treaty stipulation, and that no treaty shall be ratified until it had received the legislative assent of two-thirds of all the States of the Union, and that neither Congress nor any Territorial Legislature shall pass any law establishing or prohibiting slavery in any Territory thus acquired until it shall have sufficient population to entitle it to admission to the Union. Mr. Houston of Alabama urged the restitution of the Missouri line of 36 deg. 30'. There was in the judgment of many Southern men a better opportunity to effect an adjustment on this line of partition than upon any other basis that had been suggested. But the plea carried with it a national guaranty and protection of slavery on the southern side of the line, and its effect would inevitably have been in a few years to divide the Republic from ocean to ocean. Mr. Taylor of Louisiana wanted the Constitution so amended that the rights of the slave-holder in the Territories could be guarantied, and further amended so that no person, "unless he was of the Caucasian race and of pure and unmixed blood," should ever be allowed to vote for any officer of the National Government.

PROPOSITIONS OF COMPROMISE.

Mr. Charles Francis Adams proposed that the Constitution of the United States be so amended that no subsequent amendment thereto, "having for its object any interference with slavery, shall originate with any State that does not recognize that relation within its own limits, or shall be valid without the assent of every one of the States composing the Union." No Southern man, during the long agitation of the slavery questions extending from 1820 to 1860, had ever submitted so extreme a proposition as that of Mr. Adams. The most precious muniment of personal liberty never had such deep embedment in the organic law of the Republic as Mr. Adams now proposed for the protection of slavery. The well-grounded jealousy and fear of the smaller States had originally secured a provision that their right to equal representation in the Senate should never be taken from them even by an amendment of the Constitution. Mr. Adams now proposed to give an equal safeguard and protection to the institution of slavery. Yet the proposition was opposed by only three members of the committee of thirty-three,--Mason W. Tappan of New Hampshire, Cadwallader C. Washburn of Wisconsin, and William Kellogg of Illinois.

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 Constitution 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 assuring 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 anticipated. 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 Constitution 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 institution where agitation could not disturb it, where legislation could not affect it, where amendments to the Constitution 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 Constitution, 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 Constitution shall ever be passed that shall affect any provision of the five amendments just recited; that the provision in the original Constitution 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 Constitution. 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 constitutional 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 substituted "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 embarrassed by a Southern member who quoted resolutions which Mr. Adams had introduced in the Massachusetts Legislature in 1844, and which had been passed 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 Constitution of the United States." He declared, further, that "the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 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 constitutional heresy entertained by Mr. Calhoun, and claimed for the State of Massachusetts every power of secession or dissolution which was now asserted 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 Constitution 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 Constitution 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 association, 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 Massachusetts 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 constitutional government, Massachusetts had no part or lot in deciding the question which Mr. Adams's resolution covered. If Massachusetts 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 constitutionally or unconstitutionally annexed to the Union was no more to be decided by Massachusetts than the constitutionality 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 Constitution, 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 analysis 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 Constitution 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 constitutional amendment was reached, Mr. Corwin substituted for that which was originally draughted by Mr. Adams, an amendment declaring that "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." This was adopted by a vote of 133 to 65. It was numbered as the thirteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, 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 passage 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 assent 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 Constitution 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 passed 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 Constitution was the guaranty of slavery against the power of Congress in all territory of the United States south of 36 deg. 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 substitute 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 substituted 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 assembled 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 Constitution 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 Constitution, 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 assembled 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 Constitution, 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 Constitution 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 Constitution 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 Constitution 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 pass his own resolutions, endeavored to substitute 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 circumstance 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 passed 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 deg. 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 passed 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 deg. 30', and were therefore in no danger of slavery, it only introduces fresh embarrassment 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 latitude. 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 passed, 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 passage 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 institution 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. Municipal 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 multitude 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.

Meetings to save the Union upon the basis of surrender of principle were held throughout the free States, while a word of manly resistance to the aggressive disposition of the South, or in re-affirmation of principles so long contended for, met no popular response. Even in Boston, Wendell Phillips needed the protection of the police in returning to his home after one of his eloquent and defiant harangues, and George William Curtis was advised by the Republican mayor of Philadelphia that his appearance as a lecturer in that city would be extremely unwise. He had been engaged to speak on "The Policy of Honesty." But so great had been the change in popular feeling in a city which Mr. Lincoln had carried by a vast majority, that the owner of the hall in which Mr. Curtis was to appear, warned him that a riot was anticipated if he should speak. Its doors were closed against him. This was less than five weeks after Mr. Lincoln was elected, and the change of sentiment in Philadelphia was but an index to the change elsewhere in the North.

The South, meanwhile, had been encouraged in the work of secession by thousands of Democrats who did not desire or look for the dissolution of the Union, but wished to plot of secession to go far enough, and the danger to the Union to become just imminent enough, to destroy their political opponents. Men who afterwards attested their loyalty to the Union by their lives, took part in this dangerous scheme of encouraging a revolt which they could not repress. They apparently did not comprehend that lighted torches cannot be carried with safety through a magazine of powder; and, though they were innocent of intentional harm, they did much to increase an evil which was rapidly growing beyond all power of control. As already indicated, the position of President Buchanan and the doctrines of his message had aided in the development of this feeling in the North. It was further stimulated by the commercial correspondence between the two sections. The merchants and factors in the South did not as a class desire Disunion, and they were made to believe that the suppression of Abolitionism in the North would restore harmony and good feeling. Abolitionism was but another name for the Republican party, and in business circles in the free State that party had come to represent the source of all our trouble. These men did not yet measure the full scope of the combination against the Union, and persisted in believing that its worst enemies were in the North. The main result of these misconceptions was a steady and rapid growth of strength throughout the slave States in the movement for Secession.

ENACTMENT OF THE MORRILL TARIFF.

Fruitless and disappointing as were the proceedings of this session of Congress on the subjects which engrossed so large a share of public attention, a most important change was accomplished in the revenue laws,--a change equivalent to a revolution in the economic and financial system of the government. The withdrawal of the Southern senators and representatives left both branches of Congress under the control of the North, and by a considerable majority under the direction of the Republican party. In the preceding session of Congress the House, having a small Republican majority, had passed a bill advancing the rate of duties upon foreign importations. This action was not taken as an avowed movement for protection, but merely as a measure to increase the revenue. During Mr. Buchanan's entire term the receipts of the Treasury had been inadequate to the payment of the annual appropriations by Congress, and as a result the government had been steadily incurring debt at a rate which was afterwards found to affect the public credit at a critical juncture in our history. To check this increasing deficit the House insisted on a scale of duties that would yield a larger revenue, and on the 10th of May, 1860, passed the bill. In the Senate, then under the control of the Democratic party, with the South in the lead, the bill encountered opposition. Senators from the Cotton States thought they saw in it the hated principle of protection, and protection meant in their view, strength and prestige for the manufacturing States of the North. The bill had been prepared in committee and reported in the House by a New- England member, Mr. Morrill of Vermont, which of itself was sufficient in the eyes of many Southern men to determine its character and its fate.

Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia was at the time Chairman of the Senate Committee of Finance. He was a man of sturdy common sense, slow in his methods, but strong and honest in his processes of reasoning. He advanced rapidly in public esteem, and in 1839, at thirty years of age, was chosen Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was a sympathizer with the South-Carolina extremists, and coalesced with the Whigs to defeat the regular Democrats who were sustaining the Administration of Mr. Van Buren. In 1847 Mr. Hunter was chosen senator from Virginia, and served continuously till the outbreak of the war. He was a conservative example of that class of border State Democrats who were blinded to all interests except those of slavery.

The true wealth of Virginia, in addition to her agriculture and in aid of it, lay in her vast deposits of coal and iron, in her extensive forests, in her unsurpassed water power. Her natural resources were beyond computation, and suggested for her a great career as a commercial and manufacturing State. Her rivers on the eastern slope connected her interior with the largest and finest harbor on the Atlantic coast of North America, and her jurisdiction extended over an empire beyond the Alleghanies. Her climate was salubrious, and so temperate as to forbid the plea always used in justification of negro slavery in the Cotton States, that the white man could not perform agricultural labor. A recognition of Virginia's true destiny would point to Northern alliances and Northern sympathies. Mr. Hunter's sympathies were by birth and rearing with the South. The alliances he sought looked towards the Gulf and not towards the Lakes. Any measure which was displeasing to South Carolina or Alabama was displeasing to Mr. Hunter, and he gave no heed to what might be the relations of Virginia with the New England, Middle, and Western States. He measured the policy of Virginia by the policy of States whose geographical position, whose soil, climate, products, and capacities were totally different from hers. By Mr. Hunter's policy, Virginia could sell only slaves to the South. A more enlightened view would have enabled Virginia to furnish a large proportion of the fabrics which the Southern States were compelled to purchase in communities far to the north of her. Mr. Hunter was no doubt entirely honest in this course. He was upright in all his personal and political relations, but he could not forget that he was born a Southern man and a slave-holder. He had a full measure of that pride in his State so deeply cherished by Virginians. At the outset of his public career he became associated with Mr. Calhoun, and early imbibed the doctrines of that illustrious senator, who seldom failed to fascinate the young men who fell within the sphere of his personal influence.

Mr. Hunter therefore naturally opposed the new tariff, and under his lead all action upon it was defeated for the session. This conclusion was undoubtedly brought about by considerations outside of the legitimate scope of the real question at issue. The struggle for the Presidency was in progress, and any concession by the slave States on the tariff question would weaken the Democratic party in the section where its chief strength lay, and would correspondingly increase the prestige of Lincoln's supporters in the North and of Mr. Fillmore's followers in the South. Mr. Hunter had himself just received a strong support in the Charleston convention for the Presidency, securing a vote almost equal to that given to Douglas. This was an additional tie binding him to the South, and he responded to the wishes of that section by preventing all action on the tariff bill of the House pending the Presidential struggle of 1860.

SENATE VOTES ON THE MORRILL TARIFF.

But the whole aspect of the question was changed when at the ensuing session of Congress the senators and representatives from the Cotton States withdrew, and betook themselves to the business of establishing a Southern Confederacy. Mr. Hunter's opposition was not relaxed, but his supporters were gone. Opposition was thus rendered powerless, and the first important step towards changing the tariff system from low duties to high duties, from free-trade to protection, was taken by the passage of the Morrill Bill on the second day of March, 1861. Mr. Buchanan was within forty-eight hours of the close of his term and he promptly and cheerfully signed the bill. He had by this time become not only emancipated from Southern thraldom but in some degree embittered against Southern men, and could therefore readily disregard objections from that source. His early instincts and declarations in favor of a protective policy doubtless aided him in a conclusion which a year before he could not have reached without a conflict in his Cabinet that would probably have ended in its disruption.

The passage of the Morrill Tariff was an event which would almost have marked an era in the history of the government if public attention had not been at once absorbed in struggles which were far more engrossing than those of legislative halls. It was however the beginning of a series of enactments which deeply affected the interests of the country, and which exerted no small influence upon the financial ability of the government to endure the heavy expenditure entailed by the war which immediately followed. Theories were put aside in the presence of a great necessity, and the belief became general that in the impending strain on the resources of the country, protection to home industry would be a constant and increasing strength to the government.

On the passage of the bill in the Senate, on the 20th of February, the yeas were 25 and the nays 14. No Democratic senator voted in the affirmative and no Republican senator in the negative. It was not only a sharp division on the party line but almost equally so on the sectional line. Mr. Douglas, Mr. Rice of Minnesota, Mr. Latham of California, and Mr. Lane of Oregon were the only Northern senators who united with the compact South against the bill. Senators from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas were still taking part in the proceedings. Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky and Mr. Kennedy of Maryland were favorable to the policy of protection, but on this bill they withheld their votes. They had not abandoned all hope of an adjustment of the Disunion troubles, and deemed the pending measure too radical a change of policy to be adopted in the absence of the senators and representatives from seven States so deeply interested. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, sympathizing warmly with the Republicans on all questions relating to the preservation of the Union, was too firmly wedded to the theory of free-trade to appreciate the influence which this measure would exert in aid of the national finances.

The test vote in the House was taken on the 27th of February, on a motion made by Mr. Branch of North Carolina to lay the bill on the table. Only 43 votes were given in favor, while 102 were recorded against this summary destruction of the measure. The sectional line was not so rigidly maintained as it was in the House. Of the hostile vote 28 were from the South and 15 from the North. The Virginia delegation, following Mr. Hunter's example, voted solidly in opposition. The Southern men who voted for the bill were in nearly every instance distinguished for their hostility to secession. John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, Thomas A. R. Nelson, and William B. Stokes of Tennessee, William C. Anderson, Francis M. Bristow, Green Adams, and Laban T. Moore of Kentucky, separated from their section, and in their support of a protective tariff openly affiliated with the North.

The Morrill Tariff, as it has since been popularly known, was part of a bill whose title indicates a wider scope than the fixing of duties on imports. It provided also for the payment of outstanding Treasury notes and authorized a loan. These additional features did little to commend it to those who were looking to an alliance with the Secessionists, nor did the obvious necessity of money for the national Treasury induce the ultra disciples of free-trade in the North to waive their opposition to a measure which distinctly looked to the establishment of protection. It was a singular combination of circumstances which on the eve of the Southern revolt led to the inauguration of a policy that gave such industrial and financial strength to the Union in its hour of dire necessity, in the very crisis of its fate.