The Peace Convention.
The General Assembly of Virginia, on the 19th of January, adopted resolutions inviting Representatives of the several States to assemble in a Peace Convention at Washington, which met on the 4th of February. It was composed of 133 Commissioners, many from the border States, and the object of these was to prevail upon their associates from the North to unite with them in such recommendations to Congress as would prevent their own States from seceding and enable them to bring back six of the cotton States which had already seceded.
One month only of the session of Congress remained. Within this brief period it was necessary that the Convention should recommend amendments to the Constitution in sufficient time to enable both Houses to act upon them before their final adjournment. It was also essential to success that these amendments should be sustained by a decided majority of the commissioners both from the Northern and the border States.
On Wednesday, the 6th February, a resolution was adopted,[[10]] on motion of Mr. Guthrie, of Kentucky, to refer the resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia, and all other kindred subjects, to a committee to consist of one commissioner from each State, to be selected by the respective State delegations; and to prevent delay they were instructed to report on or before the Friday following (the 8th), “what they may deem right, necessary, and proper to restore harmony and preserve the Union.”
This committee, instead of reporting on the day appointed, did not report until Friday, the 15th February.
The amendments reported by a majority of the committee, through Mr. Guthrie, their chairman, were substantially the same with the Crittenden Compromise; but on motion of Mr. Johnson, of Maryland, the general terms of the first and by far the most important section were restricted to the present Territories of the United States. On motion of Mr. Franklin, of Pennsylvania, this section was further amended, but not materially changed, by the adoption of the substitute offered by him. Nearly in this form it was afterwards adopted by the Convention. The following is a copy: “In all the present territory of the United States north of the parallel of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes of north latitude, involuntary servitude, except in punishment of crime, is prohibited. In all the present territory south of that line, the status of persons held to involuntary service or labor, as it now exists, shall not be changed; nor shall any law be passed by Congress or the Territorial Legislature to hinder or prevent the taking of such persons from any of the States of this Union to said territory, nor to impair the rights arising from said relation; but the same shall be subject to judicial cognizance in the Federal courts, according to the course of the common law. When any Territory north or south of said line, within such boundary as Congress may prescribe, shall contain a population equal to that required for a member of Congress, it shall, if its form of government be republican, be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, with or without involuntary servitude, as the Constitution of such State may provide.”
Mr. Baldwin, of Connecticut, and Mr. Seddon, of Virginia, made minority reports, which they proposed to substitute for that of the majority. Mr. Baldwin’s report was a recommendation “to the several States to unite with Kentucky in her application to Congress to call a Convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution of the United States, to be submitted to the Legislatures of the several States, or to Conventions therein, for ratification, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by Congress, in accordance with the provisions in the fifth article of the Constitution.”
The proposition of Mr. Baldwin, received the votes of eight of the twenty-one States. These consisted of the whole of the New England States, except Rhode Island, and of Illinois, Iowa, and New York, all being free States.
The first amendment reported by Mr. Seddon differed from that of the majority inasmuch as it embraced not only the present but all future Territories. This was rejected. His second amendment, which, however, was never voted upon by the Convention, went so far as distinctly to recognize the right of secession.
More than ten days were consumed in discussion and in voting upon various propositions offered by individual commissioners. The final vote was not reached until Tuesday, the 26th February, when it was taken on the first vitally important section, as amended.
This section, on which all the rest depended, was negatived by a vote of eight States to eleven. Those which voted in its favor were Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Tennessee. And those in the negative were Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Virginia. It is but justice to say that Messrs. Ruffin and Morehead, of North Carolina, and Messrs. Rives and Summers, of Virginia, two of the five commissioners from each of these States, declared their dissent from the vote of their respective States. So, also, did Messrs. Bronson, Corning, Dodge, Wool, and Granger, five of the eleven New York commissioners, dissent from the vote of their State. On the other hand, Messrs. Meredith and Wilmot, two of the seven commissioners from Pennsylvania, dissented from the majority in voting in favor of the section. Thus would the Convention have terminated but for the interposition of Illinois. Immediately after the section had been negatived, the commissioners from that State made a motion to reconsider the vote, and this prevailed. The Convention afterwards adjourned until the next morning. When they reassembled (February 27,) the first section was adopted, but only by a majority of nine to eight States, nine being less than a majority of the States represented. This change was effected by a change of the vote of Illinois from the negative to the affirmative, by Missouri withholding her vote, and by a tie in the New York commissioners, on account of the absence of one of their number, rendering it impossible for the State to vote. Still Virginia and North Carolina, and Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, persisted in voting in the negative. From the nature of this vote, it was manifestly impossible that two-thirds of both Houses of Congress should act favorably on the amendment, even if the delay had not already rendered such action impracticable before the close of the session.
The remaining sections of the amendment were carried by small majorities. The Convention, on the same day, through Mr. Tyler, their President, communicated to the Senate and House of Representatives the amendment they had adopted, embracing all the sections, with a request that it might be submitted by Congress, under the Constitution, to the several State Legislatures. In the Senate this was immediately referred to a select committee, on motion of Mr. Crittenden. The committee, on the next day (28th Feb.), reported a joint resolution proposing it as an amendment to the Constitution, but he was never able to bring the Senate to a direct vote upon it. Failing in this, he made a motion to substitute the amendment of the Peace Convention for his own.
Mr. Crittenden’s reasons failed to convince the Senate, and his motion was rejected by a large majority (28 to 7). Then next in succession came the memorable vote on Mr. Crittenden’s own resolution, and it was in its turn defeated, as we have already stated, by a majority of 20 against 19.
In the House of Representatives, the amendment proposed by the Convention was treated with still less consideration than it had been by the Senate. The Speaker was refused leave even to present it. Every effort made for this purpose was successfully resisted by leading Republican members. The consequence is that a copy of it does not even appear in the Journal.
The refusal to pass the Crittenden or any other Compromise heightened the excitement in the South, where many showed great reluctance to dividing the Union. Georgia, though one of the cotton States, under the influence of conservative men like Alex. H. Stephens, showed greater concern for the Union than any other, and it took all the influence of spirits like that of Robert Toombs to bring her to favor secession. She was the most powerful of the cotton States and the richest, as she is to-day. On the 22d of December, 1860, Robert Toombs sent the following exciting telegraphic manifesto from Washington:
Fellow-Citizens of Georgia: I came here to secure your constitutional rights, or to demonstrate to you that you can get no guarantees for these rights from your Northern Confederates.
The whole subject was referred to a committee of thirteen in the Senate yesterday. I was appointed on the committee and accepted the trust. I submitted propositions, which, so far from receiving decided support from a single member of the Republican party on the committee, were all treated with either derision or contempt. The vote was then taken in committee on the amendments to the Constitution, proposed by Hon. J. J. Crittenden of Kentucky, and each and all of them were voted against, unanimously, by the Black Republican members of the committee.
In addition to these facts, a majority of the Black Republican members of the committee declared distinctly that they had no guarantees to offer, which was silently acquiesced in by the other members.
The Black Republican members of this Committee of Thirteen are representative men of their party and section, and to the extent of my information, truly represent the Committee of Thirty-three in the House, which on Tuesday adjourned for a week without coming to any vote, after solemnly pledging themselves to vote on all propositions then before them on that date.
That committee is controlled by Black Republicans, your enemies, who only seek to amuse you with delusive hope until your election, in order that you may defeat the friends of secession. If you are deceived by them, it shall not be my fault. I have put the test fairly and frankly. It is decisive against you; and now I tell you upon the faith of a true man that all further looking to the North for security for your constitutional rights in the Union ought to be instantly abandoned. It is fraught with nothing but ruin to yourselves and your posterity.
Secession by the fourth of March next should be thundered from the ballot-box by the unanimous voice of Georgia on the second day of January next. Such a voice will be your best guarantee for LIBERTY, SECURITY, TRANQUILLITY and GLORY.
Robert Toombs.
IMPORTANT TELEGRAPHIC CORRESPONDENCE.
Atlanta, Georgia, December 26th, 1860. Hon. S. A. Douglas or Hon. J. J. Crittenden:
Mr. Toombs’s despatch of the 22d inst. unsettled conservatives here. Is there any hope for Southern rights in the Union? We are for the Union of our fathers, if Southern rights can be preserved in it. If not, we are for secession. Can we yet hope the Union will be preserved on this principle? You are looked to in this emergency. Give us your views by despatch and oblige
William Ezzard.
Robert W. Sims.
James P. Hambleton.
Thomas S. Powell.
S. G. Howell.
J. A. Hayden.
G. W. Adair.
R. C. Honlester.
Washington, December 29th, 1860.
In reply to your inquiry, we have hopes that the rights of the South, and of every State and section, may be protected within the Union. Don’t give up the ship. Don’t despair of the Republic.
J. J. CRITTENDEN.
S. A. DOUGLAS.
Congress, amid excitement which the above dispatches indicate, and which was general, remained for several weeks comparatively inactive. Buchanan sent messages, but his suggestions were distrusted by the Republicans, who stood firm in the conviction that when Lincoln took his seat, and the new Congress came in, they could pass measures calculated to restore the property of and protect the integrity of the Union. None of them believed in the right of secession; all had lost faith in compromises, and all of this party repudiated the theory that Congress had no right to coerce a State. The revival of these questions, revived also the logical thoughts of Webster in his great reply to Hayne, and the way in which he then expanded the constitution was now accepted as the proper doctrine of Republicanism on that question. No partisan sophistry could shake the convictions made by Webster, and so apt were his arguments in their application to every new development that they supplied every logical want in the Northern mind. Republican orators and newspapers quoted and endorsed, until nearly every reading mind was imbued with the same sentiments, until in fact the Northern Democrats, and at all times the Douglas Democrats, were ready to stand by the flag of the Union. George W. Curtis, in Harper’s Weekly (a journal which at the time graphically illustrated the best Union thoughts and sentiments), in an issue as late as January 12th, 1872, well described the power of Webster’s grand ability[[11]] over a crisis which he did not live to see, Mr. Curtis says:—
“The war for the Union was a vindication of that theory of its nature which Webster had maintained in a memorably impregnable and conclusive manner. His second speech on Foot’s resolution—the reply to Hayne—was the most famous and effective speech ever delivered in this country. It stated clearly and fixed firmly in the American mind the theory of the government, which was not, indeed, original with Webster, but which is nowhere else presented with such complete and inexorable reason as in this speech. If the poet be the man who is so consummate a master of expression that he only says perfectly what everybody thinks, upon this great occasion the orator was the poet. He spoke the profound but often obscured and dimly conceived conviction of a nation. He made the whole argument of the civil war a generation before the war occurred, and it has remained unanswered and unanswerable. Mr. Everett, in his discourse at the dedication of the statute of Webster, in the State-House grounds in Boston in 1859, described the orator at the delivery of this great speech. The evening before he seemed to be so careless that Mr. Everett feared that he might not be fully aware of the gravity of the occasion. But when the hour came, the man was there. ‘As I saw him in the evening, if I may borrow an illustration from his favorite amusement,’ said Mr. Everett, ‘he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit as some here have often seen him while floating in his fishing-boat along a hazy shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and there with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like some mighty admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad pennant streaming at the main, the Stars and Stripes at the fore, the mizzen, and the peak, and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist, with all his canvas strained to the wind, and all his thunders roaring from his broadsides.’ This passage well suggests that indescribable impression of great oratory which Rufus Choate, in his eulogy of Webster at Dartmouth College, conveys by a felicitous citation of what Quintilian says of Hortensius, that there was some spell in the spoken word which the reader misses.”
As we have remarked, the Republicans were awaiting the coming of a near and greater power to themselves, and at the same time jealously watching the movements of the friends of the South in Congress and in the President’s Cabinet. It needed all their watchfulness to prevent advantages which the secessionists thought they had a right to take. Thus Jefferson Davis, on January 9th, 1860, introduced to the senate a bill “to authorize the sale of public arms to the several States and Territories,” and as secession became more probable he sought to press its passage, but failed. Floyd, the Secretary of War, was far more successful, and his conduct was made the subject of the following historic and most remarkable report:-