In the midst of forebodings which even the most optimistic shared, Congress reassembled. Feeling was tense in both houses, but it was more noticeable in the Senate, where, hitherto, political differences had not been a barrier to social intercourse. Senator Iverson put into words what all felt: "Look at the spectacle exhibited on this floor. How is it? There are Republican Northern senators upon that side. Here are Southern senators on this side. How much social intercourse is there between us? You sit upon your side, silent and gloomy; we sit upon ours with knit brows and portentous scowls.... Here are two hostile bodies on this floor; and it is but a type of the feeling that exists between the two sections."[[896]]
Southern senators hastened to lay bare their grievances. However much they might differ in naming specific, tangible ills, they all agreed upon the great cause of their apprehension and uneasiness. Davis voiced the common feeling when he said, "I believe the true cause of our danger to be that a sectional hostility has been substituted for a general fraternity."[[897]] And his colleague confirmed this opinion. Clingman put the same thought more concretely when he declared that the South was apprehensive, not because a dangerous man had been elected to the presidency; but because a President had been elected who was known to be a dangerous man and who had declared his purpose to war upon the social system of the South.[[898]]
With the utmost boldness, Southern senators announced the impending secession of their States. "We intend," said Iverson of Georgia speaking for his section, "to go out peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.... In this state of feeling, divided as we are by interests, by a geographical feeling, by everything that makes two people separate and distinct, I ask why we should remain in the same Union together?"[[899]]
No Northern senator had better reason than Douglas to believe that these were not merely idle threats. The knowledge sobered him. In this hour of peril, his deep love for the Union welled up within him, submerging the partisan and the politician. "I trust," he said, rebuking a Northern senator, "we may lay aside all party grievances, party feuds, partisan jealousies, and look to our country, and not to our party, in the consequences of our action. Sir, I am as good a party man as anyone living, when there are only party issues at stake, and the fate of political parties to be provided for. But, Sir, if I know myself, I do not desire to hear the word party, or to listen to any party appeal, while we are considering and discussing the questions upon which the fate of the country now hangs."[[900]]
In this spirit Douglas welcomed from the South the recital of special grievances. "Give us each charge and each specification.... I hold that there is no grievance growing out of a nonfulfillment of constitutional obligations, which cannot be remedied under the Constitution and within the Union."[[901]] And when the Personal Liberty Acts of Northern States were cited as a long-standing grievance, he heartily denounced them as in direct violation of the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. At the same time he contended that these acts existed generally in the States to which few fugitives ever fled, and that the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced nineteen out of twenty times. It was the twentieth case that was published abroad through the press, misleading the South. In fact, the present excitement was, to his mind, due to the inability of the extremes of North and South to understand each other. "Those of us that live upon the border, and have commercial intercourse and social relations across the line, can live in peace with each other." If the border slave States and the border free States could arbitrate the question of slavery, the Union would last forever.[[902]]
Arbitration and compromise—these were the words with which the venerable Crittenden of Kentucky, successor to Clay, now endeavored to rally Union-loving men. He was seconded by his colleague, Senator Powell, who had already moved the appointment of a special committee of thirteen, to consider the grievances between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States. Douglas put himself unreservedly at the service of the party of compromise. It seemed, for the moment, as though the history of the year 1850 were to be repeated. Now, as then, the initiative was taken by a senator from the border-State of Kentucky. Again a committee of thirteen was to prepare measures of adjustment. The composition of the committee was such as to give promise of a settlement, if any were possible. Seward, Collamer, Wade, Doolittle, and Grimes, were the Republican members; Douglas, Rice, and Bigler represented the Democracy of the North. Davis and Toombs represented the Gulf States; Powell, Crittenden, and Hunter, the border slave States.[[903]]
On the 22d of December, the committee took under consideration the Crittenden resolutions, which proposed six amendments to the Constitution and four joint resolutions. The crucial point was the first amendment, which would restore the Missouri Compromise line "in all the territory of the United States now held, or hereafter acquired." Could this disposition of the vexing territorial question have been agreed upon, the other features of the compromise would probably have commanded assent. But this and all the other proposed amendments were defeated by the adverse vote of the Republican members of the committee.[[904]]
The outcome was disheartening. Douglas had firmly believed that conciliation, or concession, alone could save the country from civil war.[[905]] When the committee first met informally[[906]] the news was already in print that the South Carolina convention had passed an ordinance of secession. Under the stress of this event, and of others which he apprehended, Douglas had voted for all the Crittenden amendments and resolutions, regardless of his personal predilections. "The prospects are gloomy," he wrote privately, "but I do not yet despair of the Union. We can never acknowledge the right of a State to secede and cut us off from the ocean and the world, without our consent. But in view of impending civil war with our brethren in nearly one-half of the States of the Union, I will not consider the question of force and war until all efforts at peaceful adjustment have been made and have failed. The fact can no longer be disguised that many of the Republican leaders desire war and disunion under pretext of saving the Union. They wish to get rid of the Southern senators in order to have a majority in the Senate to confirm Lincoln's appointments; and many of them think they can hold a permanent Republican ascendancy in the Northern States, but not in the whole Union. For partisan reasons, therefore, they are anxious to dissolve the Union, if it can be done without making them responsible before the people. I am for the Union, and am ready to make any reasonable sacrifice to save it. No adjustment will restore and preserve peace which does not banish the slavery question from Congress forever and place it beyond the reach of Federal legislation. Mr. Crittenden's proposition to extend the Missouri line accomplishes this object, and hence I can accept it now for the same reasons that I proposed it in 1848. I prefer our own plan of non-intervention and popular sovereignty, however."[[907]]
The propositions which Douglas laid before the committee proved to be even less acceptable than the Crittenden amendments. Only a single, insignificant provision relating to the colonizing of free negroes in distant lands, commended itself to a majority of the committee.[[908]] All hope of an agreement had now vanished. Sad at heart, Douglas voted to report the inability of the committee to agree upon any general plan of adjustment.[[909]] Yet he did not abandon all hope; he was not yet ready to admit that the dread alternative must be accepted. He joined with Crittenden in replying to a dispatch from the South: "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."[[910]] And when Crittenden proposed to the Senate that the people at large should be allowed to express their approval, or disapproval, of his amendments by a vote, Douglas cordially indorsed the suggested referendum in a speech of great power.
There was dross mingled with the gold in this speech of January 3d. Not all his auditors by any means were ready to admit that the attempt of the Federal government to control the slavery question in the Territories, regardless of the wishes of the inhabitants, was the real cause of Southern discontent. Nor were all willing to concede that "whenever Congress had refrained from such interference, harmony and fraternal feeling had been restored."[[911]] The history of Kansas was still too recent. Yet from these premises, Douglas drew the conclusion "that the slavery question should be banished forever from the Halls of Congress and the arena of Federal politics by an irrepealable constitutional provision."[[912]]