hole people in this part of the country are
waiting with impatience for your assumption of the great office to
which the suffrage of a free people has called you, and will hail you
as a deliverer from treason and anarchy. In New York City all classes
and parties are rapidly uniting in this sentiment, and here in Albany,
where I am spending a few days in attendance upon Court, the general
tone of feeling and thinking about public affairs shows little
difference between Republicans and Democrats."--W.M. Evarts to Abraham
Lincoln, January 15, 1861. Unpublished letter on file in Department of
State at Washington.]

[Footnote 641: _Appleton's Cyclopaedia_, 1861, p. 520.]

On January 18, a meeting of the merchants of New York City, held in
the Chamber of Commerce, unanimously adopted a memorial, addressed to
Congress, urging the acceptance of the Crittenden compromise. Similar
action to maintain peace in an honourable way was taken in other
cities of the State, while congressmen were daily loaded with appeals
favouring any compromise that would keep the peace. Among other
petitions of this character, Elbridge G. Spaulding presented one from
Buffalo, signed by Millard Fillmore, Henry W. Rogers, and three
thousand others. On January 24, Governor Morgan received resolutions,
passed by the General Assembly of Virginia, inviting the State,
through its Legislature, to send commissioners to a peace conference
to be held at Washington on February 4. Nothing had occurred in the
intervening weeks to change the sentiment of the Legislature,
expressed earlier in the session; but, after much discussion and many
delays, it was resolved, in acceding to the request of Virginia, that
"it is not to be understood that this Legislature approves of the
propositions submitted, or concedes the propriety of their adoption by
the proposed convention. But while adhering to the position she has
heretofore occupied, New York will not reject an invitation to a
conference, which, by bringing together the men of both sections,
holds out the possibility of an honourable settlement of our national
difficulties, and the restoration of peace and harmony to the
country."

The balloting for commissioners resulted in the election of David
Dudley Field, William Curtis Noyes, James S. Wadsworth, James C.
Smith, Amaziah B. James, Erastus Corning, Francis Granger, Greene C.
Bronson, William E. Dodge, John A. King, and John E. Wool, with the
proviso, however, that