another and another,
and the government is rendered powerless. I am not prepared to humble
the general government at the feet of the seceding States. I am
unwilling to say to the government, 'You must abandon your property,
you must cease to collect the revenues, because you are threatened.'
In other words, gentlemen, it seems to me--and I know I speak the
wishes of my constituents--that, while I abhor coercion, in one sense,
as war, I wish to preserve the dignity of the government of these
United States as well."[653]

[Footnote 653: Horace Greeley, _The American Conflict_, Vol. 1, p.
394.

"When rebellion actually began many loyal Democrats came nobly out and
planted themselves by the side of the country. But those who clung to
the party organisation, what did they do? A month before Mr. Lincoln
was inaugurated they held a state convention for the Democratic party
of the State of New York. It was said it was to save the country,--it
was whispered it was to save the party. The state committee called it
and representative men gathered to attend it.... They applauded to the
echo the very blasphemy of treason, but they attempted by points of
order to silence DeWitt Clinton's son because he dared to raise his
voice for the Constitution of his country and to call rebellion by its
proper name."--Speech of Roscoe Conkling, September 26, 1862, A.R.
Conkling, _Life and Letters of Roscoe Conkling_, p. 180.]

The applause that greeted these loyal sentences disclosed a patriotic
sentiment, which, until then, had found no opportunity for expression;
yet the convention, in adopting a series of resolutions, was of one
mind on the question of submitting the Crittenden compromise to a
direct vote of the people. "Their voice," said the chairman, "will be
omnipresent here, and if it be raised in time it may be effectual
elsewhere."

There is something almost pathetic in the history of these efforts
which were made during the progress of secession, to avert, if
possible, the coming shock. The great peace conference, assembled by
the action of Virginia, belongs to these painful and wasted
endeavours. On February 4, the day that delegates from six cotton
States assembled at Montgomery to form a Southern confederacy, one
hundred and thirty-three commissioners, representing twenty-one
States, of which fourteen were non-slave-holding, met at Washington
and continued in session, sitting with closed doors, until the 27th.
It was a body of