d voted for it. In speeches in the open Senate,
Douglas declared it,[619] Toombs admitted it,[620] and Davis implied
it.[621] Seward sounds the only note of their insincerity. "I think,"
he said, in a letter to the President-elect, "that Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi, and Louisiana could not be arrested, even if we should
offer all you suggest, and with it the restoration of the Missouri
Compromise line. But persons acting for those States intimate that
they might be so arrested, because they think that the Republicans are
not going to concede the restoration of that line."[622] It is likely
Seward hesitated to believe that his vote against the compromise, for
whatever reason it was given, helped to inaugurate hostilities; and
yet nothing is clearer, in spite of his letter to Lincoln, than that
in December the Republicans defeated the Crittenden compromise, the
adoption of which would have prevented civil war.[623]

[Footnote 616: Coleman, _Life of John J. Crittenden_, Vol. 2, p. 237.]

[Footnote 617: _Letters of August Belmont_, privately printed, p. 24.]

[Footnote 618: Horace Greeley, _The American Conflict_, Vol. 1, p.
362.]

[Footnote 619: "In the committee of thirteen, a few days ago, every
member from the South, including those from the cotton States,
expressed their readiness to accept the proposition of my venerable
friend from Kentucky as a final settlement of the controversy, if
tendered and sustained by the Republican members." Douglas in the
Senate, January 3, 1861.--_Congressional Globe_, Appendix, p. 41.]

[Footnote 620: "I said to the committee of thirteen, and I say here,
that, with other satisfactory provisions, I would accept it." Toombs
in the Senate, January 7, 1861.--_Globe_, p. 270. "I can confirm the
Senator's declaration that Senator Davis himself, when on the
committee of thirteen, was ready, at all times, to compromise on the
Crittenden proposition. I will go further and say that Mr. Toombs was
also." Douglas in the Senate, March 2, 1861.--_Globe_, p. 1391.]

[Footnote 621: See Davis's speech of January 10, 1861. _Congressional
Globe_, p. 310.]

[Footnote 622: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 3, p. 263.
Letter to Lincoln, December 26, 1860.]

[Footnote 623: James F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol.
3, p. 155.]

In deference to the wishes of Lincoln and of his friends, who were
grooming him for United States senator, Greeley, before the end of
December, had, in a