tee of
thirteen appointed by the Senate in December, 1860, which took for its
guidance a detailed scheme of compromise put forward by Senator
Crittenden, of Kentucky. The efforts of this committee to come to an
agreement broke down at the outset upon the question of the Territories,
and the responsibility, for good or for evil, of bringing them to an end
must probably be attributed to the advice of Lincoln. Crittenden's first
proposal was that there should be a Constitutional Amendment declaring
that slavery should be prohibited "in all the territory of the United
States, now held or hereafter acquired, north of latitude 36 degrees 30
minutes"--(the limit fixed in the Missouri Compromise, but restricted
then to the Louisiana purchase)--while in all territory, now held or
thereafter acquired south of that line, it should be permitted.
Crittenden also proposed that when a Territory on either side of the line
became a State, it should become free to decide the question for itself;
but the discussion never reached this point. On the proposal as to the
Territories there seemed at first to be a prospect that the Republicans
would agree, in which case the South might very likely have agreed too.
The desire for peace was intensely strong among the commercial men of New
York and other cities, and it affected the great political managers and
the statesmen who, like Seward himself, were in close touch with this
commercial influence. Tenacious adherence to declared principle may have
been as strong in country districts as the desire for accommodation was
in these cities, but it was at any rate far less vocal, and on the whole
it seems that compromise was then in the air. It seemed clear from the
expressed opinions of his closest allies that Seward would support this
compromise. Now Seward just at this time received Lincoln's offer of the
office of Secretary of State, a great office and one in which Seward
expected to rule Lincoln and the country, but in accepting which, as he
did, he made it incumbent on himself not to part company at once with the
man who would be nominally his chief. Then there occurred a visit paid
on Seward's behalf by his friend Thurlow Weed, an astute political
manager but also an able statesman, to Lincoln at Springfield. Weed
brought back a written statement of Lincoln's views. Seward's support
was not given to the compromise; nor naturally was that of the more
radical Republicans, to use a term whic