Compromise, let each new State decide for itself whether it would be
slave or free, and forbade Congress to abolish slavery in the District
of Columbia or interfere with the inter-state transportation of slaves.
The United States was to pay for all fugitives whose capture should be
successfully prevented, and slaves as slaves could be carried through
free States. This measure, before Congress all winter, was finally lost
only for lack of southern votes.

A peace congress, called by Virginia, met at Washington in February.
Most of the northern States were represented and all the southern which
had not seceded. It sat for three weeks, and adopted resolutions
identical in substance with the Crittenden Compromise. These dangerously
large offers of concession, mainly well meant, happily proved useless.
The South had gone too far. She did not want compromise, but was bent
upon setting up a slave empire.

Mr. Lincoln arrived safely in Washington on February 23d, having eluded
a rumored plot to assassinate him in Baltimore. He accomplished this by
assuming a slight disguise and taking an earlier train than the one in
which he had been announced to go. He was duly inaugurated on March 4th.
In his inaugural he disclaimed all purpose to interfere with slavery in
the slave States, yet denied the right of secession, and proposed to
regain and hold the property and places belonging to the United States
in all parts thereof. There would be no bloodshed, he said, unless it
were forced upon the Government. "In your hands, my dissatisfied
fellow-countrymen," so ran his memorable words, "in your hands, not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. You can have no conflict
without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but
friends." This message, held out as an olive branch, the South denounced
as a menace. Some northern papers condemned it as the "knell and requiem
of the Union." But the general feeling it evoked at the North was one of
rejoicing. People believed that a hand both moderate and firm had at
length seized the helm.

The new President stood faced by an herculean task. Congress was not yet
fully purged of traitors, while Washington still swarmed with their
friends and agents. Floyd's treachery had tied Lincoln's hands. All the
best munitions of war had been sent south. Of the rifled cannon
belonging to the United States not one was left. Only a handful of
regular troops were within call, and the resignatio