silence and the feeble hope that this
first fury of the disunion onset might spend itself in angry words, and
be followed by calmer counsels. Nevertheless, it was difficult to keep
entirely still under the irritating provocation. On the third day of
the session, Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, replied to both the
President's message and Clingman's speech. Mr. Hale thought "this state
of affairs looks to one of two things; it looks to absolute submission,
not on the part of our Southern friends and the Southern States but of
the North--to the abandonment of their position; it looks to a
surrender of that popular sentiment which has been uttered through the
constituted forms of the ballot-box; or it looks to open war. We need
not shut our eyes to the fact. It means war, and it means nothing else;
and the State which has put herself in the attitude of secession so
looks upon it.... If it is preannounced and determined that the voice
of the majority expressed through the regular and constituted forms of
the Constitution will not be submitted to, then, sir, this is not a
Union of equals; it is a Union of a dictatorial oligarchy on the one
side, and a herd of slaves and cowards on the other. That is it, sir;
nothing more, nothing less."

While the Southern Democratic party and the Republican party thus
drifted into defiant attitudes the other two parties to the late
Presidential contest naturally fell into the role of peacemakers. In
this work they were somewhat embarrassed by their party record, for
they had joined loudly in the current charge of "abolitionism" against
the people of the North, and especially against the Republican party.
Nevertheless, they not only came forward to tender the olive branch,
and to deprecate and rebuke the threats and extreme measures of the
disunionists, but even went so far as to deny and disapprove the staple
complaints of the conspirators.

[Sidenote] "Globe," Dec. 4, 1860, p. 5.

It must be remembered to the lasting honor of Senator Crittenden that
at the very outset of the discussion he repudiated the absurd theory of
noncoercion. "I do not agree that there is no power in the President to
preserve the Union; I will say that now. If we have a Union at all, and
if, as the President thinks, there is no right to secede on the part of
any State (and I agree with him in that), I think there is a right to
employ our power to preserve the Union."

[Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 11, 1860, pp. 51,