he was placed upon the Senate
committee of thirteen to consider the Crittenden compromise. It was
admitted that the restoration of the Missouri line was the nub of the
controversy; that, unless it could be accepted, compromise would fail;
and that failure meant certain secession. "War of a most bitter and
sanguinary character will be sure to follow," wrote Senator Grimes of
Iowa.[683] "The heavens are, indeed, black," said Dawes of
Massachusetts, "and an awful storm is gathering. I am well-nigh
appalled at its awful and inevitable consequences."[684] Seward did
not use words of such alarming significance, but he appreciated the
likelihood of secession. On December 26 he wrote Lincoln that
"sedition will be growing weaker and loyalty stronger every day from
the acts of secession as they occur;" but, in the same letter, he
added: "South Carolina has already taken the attitude of defiance.
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana have pushed on to the
same attitude. I think that they could not be arrested, even if we
should offer all you suggest, and with it the restoration of the
Missouri Compromise line."[685] To his wife, also, to whom alone he
confided his secret thoughts, he wrote, on the same day: "The South
will force on the country the issue that the free States shall admit
that slaves are property, and treat them as such, or else there will
be a secession."[686]

[Footnote 683: William Salter, _Life of James W. Grimes_, p. 132.
Letter of December 16, 1860.]

[Footnote 684: New York _Tribune_, December 24, 1860.]

[Footnote 685: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 485.]

[Footnote 686: _Ibid._, p. 486.]

Nevertheless, the Republican senators of the committee of thirteen,
inspired by the firm attitude of Lincoln, voted against the first
resolution of the Crittenden compromise. They consented that Congress
should have no power either to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia without compensation and the consent of its inhabitants, or
to prohibit the transportation of slaves between slave-holding States
and territories; but they refused to protect slavery south of the
Missouri line, especially since such an amendment, by including future
acquisitions of territory, would, as Lincoln declared, popularise
filibustering for all south of us. "A year will not pass till we shall
have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the
Union."[687]

[Footnote 687: Nicolay and Hay, _Abraham