Two-thirds of each House…recommended to the
States a compromise thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, as
follows: “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.”
Conservative Republicans voted with the Democrats to carry this measure of which Lincoln approved in his inaugural address.
Republican
leaders bent upon pushing the South to war effectively scuttled the
Crittenden compromise plan as they feared a national referendum would
welcome peaceful compromise. Before and throughout the war, efforts to
avoid and end the bloodshed came almost entirely from the South.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
The Core of the Anti-Republican Argument
“Thurlow
Weed had been predicting since November [1860] that if the Republicans
could make the Union rather than slavery the central issue of the
[sectional] crisis, a united North would rally behind him. He . . . did
not hesitate to urge Lincoln to take advantage of the sudden outburst
of patriotic fervor. From New York he told the president-elect, “We
shall have a United north – a condition about which I have been filled
with solicitude.”
[But]
the imminence of war stirred a desperation for peace . . . and
conciliationist leaders launched another offensive, spearheaded once
more by Senators Crittenden and [Stephen] Douglas. Despite Republican
opposition . . . the encouragement they had had been receiving across
the North and Upper South convinced them that Northern public sentiment
was behind compromise, particularly the Crittenden plan.
With
that support in mind, the two senators issued a joint letter assuring
concerned Southerners that their rights could be secured in the Union.
On January 3,
citing numerous reports of massive public sympathy for a peaceful
resolution to the crisis, Crittenden asked the Senate to refer his
amendments to the people, to be decided upon in national convention. He
also sought to attract Republican support by adding two propositions
drawn from Douglas’s failed proposal: a national ban on black voting and
officeholding, and federal subsidization of black colonization to
Africa.
[Douglas]
charged the [uncompromising] Republicans with “attempt[ing] to
manufacture partisan capital out of a question involving the peace and
safety of the country.” Worse, they refused to help resolve the horrific
crisis even though it was their own actions that had caused it . . .
[and attacked them] for being naïve ideologues: for all their talk of
upholding the Constitution and enforcing the laws, he stormed, they had
to deal with the basic fact that “the revolution is complete.”
“In
my opinion South Carolina has no right to secede,” he declared, “but
she has done it.” The question now was not how to prevent disunion but
how to reverse it – by force of arms or by a peaceful resolution of
sectional differences? Here Douglas reached the core of the
anti-Republican argument.
“Are
we prepared in our hearts for war with our own brethren and kindred?”
he demanded. “I confess I am not . . . I will not meditate war, nor
tolerate the idea, until every effort at peaceful adjustment has been
exhausted . . . I am for peace to save the Union.”
(Lincoln and the Decision for War, the Northern Response to Secession, Russell McClintock, UNC Press, 2008, pp. 111; 115)
