fort to their movement. In the meantime, great meetings
in Philadelphia and New York strongly condemned the Abolitionists,
and urged the most extravagant additional concessions to slavery
for the sake of peace. On the 12th of January Mr. Seward made his
great speech in the Senate, declaring that he could "afford to meet
prejudice with conciliation, exaction with concession which surrenders
no principle, and violence with the right hand of peace." He was
willing to give up Congressional prohibition of slavery in the
Territories, enforce the Fugitive Slave law, and perpetuate slavery
in our Republic by amending the Constitution for that purpose.
The Crittenden compromise, which practically surrendered everything
to slavery, only failed in the Senate by one vote, and this failure
resulted from the non-voting of six rebel senators, who were so
perfectly devil-bent upon the work of national dismemberment that
they would not listen to any terms of compromise, or permit their
adoption. The Peace Congress, assembled for the purpose of devising
some means of national pacification, agreed upon a series of measures
covering substantially the same ground as the Crittenden compromise,
while both Houses of Congress agreed to a constitutional amendment
denying any power to interfere with slavery "until every State in
the Union, by its individual State action, shall consent to its
exercise." The feverish dread of war which prevailed throughout
the Northern States was constantly aggravated by multiplying
evidences of slaveholding desperation. The general direction of
public opinion pointed to the Abolitionists as the authors of these
national troubles, while the innocent and greatly-abused slaveholders
were to be petted and placated by any measures which could possibly
serve their purpose. Indeed, the spirit of Northern submission
had never, in the entire history of the anti-slavery conflict, been
more strikingly exhibited than during the last days of the Thirty-
sixth Congress, when the Capital of the Republic was threatened by
armed treason, and the President-elect reached Washington in a
disguise which baffled the assassins who had conspired against his
life. To the very last the old medicine of compromise and conciliation
seemed to be the sovereign hope of the people of the free States;
and although it had failed utterly, and every offer of friendship
and peace had been promptly spurned as the evidence of weakness or
cowardi