d remained to be tried.

It was a disciple of Clay's, Senator Crittenden, who made the attempt, a
Whig and a Kentuckian like his master. He proposed a compromise very
much in Clay's manner, made up for the most part of carefully balanced
concessions to either section. But its essence lay in its proposed
settlement of the territorial problem, which consisted of a
Constitutional Amendment whereby territories lying south of latitude 36 deg.
30' should be open to Slavery, and those north of that line closed
against it. This was virtually the extension of the Missouri Compromise
line to the Pacific, save that California, already accepted as a Free
State, was not affected. Crittenden, though strenuously supported by
Douglas, did not meet with Clay's measure of success. The Senate
appointed a committee to consider the relations of the two sections, and
to that committee, on which he had a seat, he submitted his plan. But
its most important clause was negatived by a combination of extremes,
Davis and the other Southerners from the Cotton States combining with
the Republicans to reject it. There is, however, some reason to believe
that the Southerners would have accepted the plan if the Republicans had
done so. The extreme Republicans, whose representative on the committee
was Wade of Ohio, would certainly have refused it in any case, but the
moderates on that side might probably have accepted and carried it had
not Lincoln, who had been privately consulted, pronounced decidedly
against it. This fixes upon Lincoln a considerable responsibility before
history, for it seems probable that if the Crittenden Compromise had
been carried the Cotton States would not have seceded, and South
Carolina would have stood alone. The refusal, however, is very
characteristic of his mind. No-one, as his whole public conduct showed,
was more moderate in counsel and more ready to compromise on practical
matters than he. Nor does it seem that he would have objected strongly
to the Crittenden plan--though he certainly feared that it would lead to
filibustering in Mexico and Cuba for the purpose of obtaining more slave
territory--if it could have been carried out by Congressional action
alone. But the Dred Scott judgment made it necessary to give it the form
of a Constitutional Amendment, and a Constitutional Amendment on the
lines proposed would do what the Fathers of the Republic had so
carefully refrained from doing--make Slavery specifically and in