ce of the unwillingness of the South to compromise. In fact
the Southern leaders were entirely frank and outspoken in acknowledging
their position; they had said, from the beginning, that they did not
wish the Committee of Thirty-three to accomplish anything; and they had
endeavored to dissuade Southerners from accepting positions upon it.
Hawkins of Florida said that "the time of compromise had passed
forever." South Carolina refused to share in the Peace Congress, because
she did "not deem it advisable to initiate negotiations when she had no
desire or intention to promote the object in view." Governor Peters of
Mississippi, in poetic language, suggested another difficulty: "When
sparks cease to fly upwards," he said, "Comanches respect treaties, and
wolves kill sheep no more, the oath of a Black Republican might be of
some value as a protection to slave property." Jefferson Davis
contemptuously stigmatized all the schemes of compromise as "quack
nostrums," and he sneered justly enough at those who spun fine arguments
of legal texture, and consumed time "discussing abstract questions,
reading patchwork from the opinions of men now mingled with the dust."

It is not known by what logic gentlemen who held these views defended
their conduct in retaining their positions in the government of the
nation for the purpose of destroying it. Senator Yulee of Florida
shamelessly gave his motive for staying in the Senate: "It is thought we
can keep the hands of Mr. Buchanan tied and disable the Republicans from
effecting any legislation which will strengthen the hands of the
incoming administration." Mr. Toombs of Georgia, speaking and voting at
his desk in the Senate, declared himself "as good a rebel and as good a
traitor as ever descended from Revolutionary loins," and said that the
Union was already dissolved,--by which assertion he made his position in
the Senate absolutely indefensible. The South Carolina senators resigned
before their State ordained itself a "foreign nation," and incurred
censure for being so "precipitate." In a word, the general desire was to
remain in office, hampering and obstructing the government, until March
4, 1861, and at a caucus of disunionists it was agreed to do so. But the
pace became too rapid, and resignations followed pretty close upon the
formal acts of secession.

On the same day on which the Peace Congress opened its sessions in
Washington, there came together at Montgomery, in Alabama, d