--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was repealed, and the Territories of the United States north of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 t