These letters were private, but the public learned of Lincoln’s firmness from newspaper reports suggesting that he would not be intimidated by the prospect of war. On December 12, the New York Herald spoke of his hard-line position. Intimate friends, evidently reflecting his views, declared “that peaceable secession was a matter of absolute impossibility.” They asserted “that even though coercion were not employed by the federal government, a conflict would be made inevitable by the improbability of an agreement upon the terms of the separation between the two sections of the country. Secession and civil war were evidently thought contemporaneous contingencies by the parties in question. Reconciliation on the basis of Northern concessions was scouted with much vehemence; although aggression was deprecated, collision was confidently predicted.” At the same time, Lincoln “took no pains to conceal his indignation” at reports that Western merchants were being molested by Southern mobs.166
Editorials in the Illinois State Journal, widely viewed as reflecting Lincoln’s opinion, also rejected appeasement. “We feel indignant, sometimes,” said the Journal on December 17, “when we hear timid Republicans counseling an abandonment, in part, of Republican grounds. We are asking for nothing that is not clearly right. We have done nothing wrong—we have nothing to apologize for—nothing to take back, as a party. We have fought a hard battle—we have come out victorious, and shall we now call back the routed, flying enemy, and basely surrender all that we have gained? Never!”167 (Henry Villard called this editorial proof of Lincoln’s “growing mettle.”)168
No concession would satisfy the South, Lincoln argued. “Give them Personal Liberty bills & they will pull in the slack, hold on & insist on the border state Compromise—give them that, they’ll again pull in the slack & demand Crit[tenden]’s Compr[omise]—that pulled in, they will want all that So[uth] Carolina asks.”169 Lincoln’s pessimism was well founded: it is not clear that any compromise was possible. A New York Republican observed that “Lincoln was right … when he said in his Cooper Institute speech that the only thing that will satisfy them at all is for us to think as they do about slavery and act accordingly. This we cannot do—if we pretended to do it they would give us no credit for sincerity & would be right in not doing it. If any less is offered it only subjects [us] to the disgrace of failure.”170 A congressman from Vermont concurred, predicting that nothing “short of legalizing and introducing slavery in the North would satisfy” the Cotton States.171 On December 13, before serious efforts to avert civil war were undertaken in Washington, thirty Southern members of Congress stated that “argument is exhausted. All hope of relief in the Union, through the agency of committees, Congressional legislation, or constitutional amendments, is extinguished.… We are satisfied the honor, safety, and independence of the Southern people are to be found only in a Southern Confederacy.”172 That same day, Alabama Congressman David Clopton wrote in a similar vein to a friend: “The argument is exhausted, further remonstrance is dishonorable, hesitation is dangerous, delay is submission, ‘to your tents, O Israel!’ and let the God of battles decide the issue.”173 These deeply held convictions made it unlikely that concessions of any kind would have persuaded the Deep South to return voluntarily.
While privately refusing to support the Crittenden Compromise, Lincoln continued to balk at issuing a public statement. When catechized by North Carolina Congressman John A. Gilmer, a strong Unionist, he replied: “Is it desired that I shall shift the ground upon which I have been elected? I can not do it. You need only to acquaint yourself with that ground, and press it on the attention of the South. It is all in print and easy of access. May I be pardoned if I ask whether even you have ever attempted to procure the reading of the Republican platform, or my speeches, by the Southern people? If not, what reason have I to expect that any additional production of mine would meet a better fate? It would make me appear as if I repented for the crime of having been elected, and was anxious to apologize and beg forgiveness. To so represent me, would be the principal use made of any letter I might now thrust upon the public. My old record cannot be so used; and that is precisely the reason that some new declaration is so much sought.” He assured Gilmer that he had “no thought of recommending the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, nor the slave trade among the slave states.” Even if he “were to make such recommendation, it is quite clear Congress would not follow it.” He would not employ slaves in arsenals and dockyards, nor would he use political litmus tests in appointing officials in areas of the South with few Republicans. In sum, he concluded, “I never have been, am not now, and probably never shall be, in a mood of harassing the people, either North or South. On the territorial question, I am inflexible.… On that, there is a difference between you and us; and it is the only substantial difference. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. For this, neither has any just occasion to be angry with the other.” He claimed that he had never read any of the Personal Liberty Laws, but he pledged that he would be glad to see their repeal if they violated the Constitution. Yet he “could hardly be justified, as a citizen of Illinois, or as President of the United States, to recommend the repeal of a statute of Vermont, or South Carolina.”174
Lincoln was doubtless correct in thinking that no statement would placate the Deep South. The editors of the Charleston Mercury had announced that even if he were “to come out and declare that he held sacred every right of the South, with respect to African slavery, no one should believe him; and, if he was believed, his professions should not have the least influence on the course of the South.”175
Lincoln’s legendary patience wore thin as disunionists continued to misrepresent him. He declared that the South “has eyes but does not see, and ears but does not hear.”176 William C. Smedes, president of the Southern Railroad Company of Mississippi, claimed that the president-elect “holds the black man to be the equal of the white,” “stigmatizes our whole people as immoral & unchristian,” and made “infamous & unpatriotic avowals … on the presentation of a pitcher by some free negroes to Gov: Chase of Ohio.” When Henry J. Raymond forwarded these allegations, Lincoln replied heatedly: “What a very mad-man your correspondent, Smedes is. Mr. Lincoln is not pledged to the ultimate extinctinction of slavery; does not hold the black man to be the equal of the white, unqualifiedly as Mr. S. states it; and never did stigmatize their white people as immoral & unchristian; and Mr. S. can not prove one of his assertions true. Mr. S. seems sensitive on the questions of morals and christianity. What does he think of a man who makes charges against another which he does not know to be true, and could easily learn to be false? As to the pitcher story, it is a forgery out and out. I never made but one speech in Cincinnati.… I have never yet seen Gov. Chase. I was never in a meeting of negroes in my life; and never saw a pitcher presented by anybody to anybody.”177
Lincoln told another Mississippian, E. D. Ray, that “if the Southern States concluded upon a contingent secession, that is, upon awaiting aggressive acts on the part of his Administration, they would never go out of the Union.”178 The president-elect handed Ray a copy of his 1858 debates with Douglas and assured him: “You will find that the only difference between you and me is, that I think slavery wrong, and you think it right; that I am opposed to its extension, while you advocate it; and that as to the security of the institution and the protection of slave property in the States where it has a lawful existence, you will find it as great under my administration as it ever was under that of Mr. Buchanan.” When Lincoln expressed the hope that Southerners were not fearful that he would hurt them, Ray replied: “No we ain’t.”179 Yet another caller from the Magnolia State came away from an interview with the president-elect admitting that “the idea of ‘raw head and bloody bones’—the beast with ‘seven heads and ten horns’ at once passed from his mind.” He wished all his people could see Lincoln, for the “mere sight of him would drive secession out of the heart of every honest Southerner.”180
Similarly, a muscular Virginian declared after an interview, “Lincoln is a fine man; he will never intentionally harm any one.”181 To an Illinois Democrat born in the Old Dominion, Lincoln expressed “cordial sentiments toward the people of Virginia.”182 When a South Carolina woman exclaimed to him, “you look, act, and speak like a humane, kind and benevolent man!” he asked in reply: “Did you take me for a savage, madam?”183
Resisting the Crittenden Compromise
Back in Washington, Seward, sensing that his original strategy was not working, decided to take the offensive. Fertile in expedients, he dispatched Weed to Springfield to lobby the president-elect on behalf of the Crittenden Compromise. Perhaps Lincoln could yet be persuaded to back the Kentucky senator’s solution to the sectional crisis. Lord Thurlow pressured Lincoln to support the Crittenden plan, which the Albany Evening Journal was touting. That paper had just reiterated its call for the extension of the Missouri Compromise line and declared that it was “almost prepared to say, that Territories may be safely left to take care of themselves; and that, when they contain a Population which … entitles them to a Representative in Congress, they may come into the Union with State Governments of their own framing.”184 In Albany it was believed that this editorial reflected Seward’s views, for as the senator himself once remarked: “Seward is Weed and Weed is Seward. What I do, Weed approves. What he says, I endorse. We are one.”185 Seward made no attempt to dissociate himself from Weed’s editorial, which the president-elect termed “a heavy broadside.” Lincoln told its author: “You have opened your fire at a critical moment, aiming at friends and foes alike. It will do some good or much mischief. Will the Republicans in New York sustain you in this view of the question?” Weed said he would press his case even if it remained unpopular. Lincoln optimistically replied “that while there were some loud threats and much muttering in the cotton States, he hoped that by wisdom and forbearance the danger of serious trouble might be averted, as such dangers had been in former times.”186 He strenuously rejected the proposal to restore the Missouri Compromise line, and he then gave Weed the following resolutions to pass along to Seward for submission to Congress:
That the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution ought to be enforced by a law of Congress, with efficient provisions for that object, not obliging private persons to assist in it’s execution, but punishing all who resist it, and with the usual safeguards to liberty, securing free men against being surrendered as slaves
That all state laws, if there be such, really, or apparently, in conflict with such law of Congress, ought to be repealed; and no opposition to the execution of such law of Congress ought to be made
That the Federal Union must be preserved.
Lincoln felt that these resolutions “would do much good, if introduced and unanamously supported by our friends.”187 Weed was instructed to show them to Senators Hamlin and Trumbull and, if they approved, to have them introduced in Congress.
Another visitor to Springfield in late December urged Lincoln to endorse the Crittenden Compromise. Duff Green, a prominent Democrat who had served in Andrew Jackson’s kitchen cabinet and whose wife was distantly related to Mary Todd Lincoln, traveled to Illinois to persuade the president-elect to lobby Congress on behalf of the Kentucky senator’s plan, which was languishing without his support. Green first spoke with President Buchanan, who suggested that he enlist Lincoln’s aid. On December 28, Green and Lincoln conversed at length; the president-elect said of the Crittenden resolutions “that he believed that the adoption of the [Missouri Compromise] line proposed would quiet for the present the agitation of the Slavery question, but believed it would be renewed by the seizure and attempted annexation of Mexico.—He said that the real question at issue between the North & the South, was Slavery ‘propagandism’ and that upon that issue the republican party was opposed to the South and that he was with his own party; that he had been elected by that party and intended to sustain his party in good faith, but added that the question of the Amendments to the Constitution and the questions submitted by Mr. Crittenden, belonged to the people & States in legislatures or Conventions & that he would be inclined not only to acquiesce, but give full force and effect to their will thus expressed.” Green proposed that Lincoln write him a letter referring the measure to the attention of the states.188
Lincoln did prepare such a document, in which he bluntly declared: “I do not desire any amendment of the Constitution. Recognizing, however, that questions of such amendment rightfully belong to the American People, I should not feel justified, nor inclined, to withhold from them, if I could, a fair opportunity of expressing their will thereon, through either of the modes prescribed in the instrument. In addition I declare that the maintainance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection, and endurance of our political fabric depends—and I denounce the lawless invasion, by armed force, of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as the gravest of crimes. I am greatly averse to writing anything for the public at this time; and I consent to the publication of this, only upon the condition that six of the twelve United States Senators for the States of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas shall sign their names to what is written on this sheet below my name, and allow the whole to be published together.”189 Instead of giving this document to Green, Lincoln sent it to Trumbull with instructions to pass it on to Green only if it seemed likely to do no harm. Trumbull evidently decided not to forward it.
Others, including Edward Bates and a wealthy New York businessman and Republican activist, James H. van Alen, also pressed Lincoln to back the Crittenden Compromise. In a speech that he penned sometime before February 12 but did not deliver, Lincoln explained why he rejected that advice: “I so refused, not from any party wantonness, nor from any indifference to the troubles of the country. I thought such refusal was demanded by the view that if, when a Chief Magistrate is constitutionally elected, he cannot be inaugurated till he betrays those who elected him, by breaking his pledges, and surrendering to those who tried and failed to defeat him at the polls, this government and all popular government is already at an end. Demands for such surrender, once recognized, are without limit, as to nature, extent and repetition. They break the only bond of faith between public and public servant; and they distinctly set the minority over the majority. I presume there is not a man in America, (and there ought not to be one) who opposed my election, who would, for a moment, tolerate his own candidate in such surrender, had he been successful in the election. In such case they would all see, that such surrender would not be merely the ruin of a man, or a party; but, as a precedent, would be the ruin of the government itself. I do not deny the possibility that the people may err in an election; but if they do, the true cure is in the next election; and not in the treachery of the party elected.”190
In January, Crittenden attempted to have the senate approve his plan even without the endorsement of the Committee of Thirteen, which had turned it down on December 22. He tacked on two constitutional amendments suggested by Stephen A. Douglas: that free blacks in the states and territories be denied the right to vote or hold office and that free blacks be colonized to Africa or South America at federal expense. (Why the Little Giant made those proposals is unclear, for Southerners did not want them. It suggests that the racist demagoguery he had long practiced may have reflected his true personal feelings. It is noteworthy that in supporting the Crittenden Compromise, Douglas abandoned popular sovereignty, an indication that his devotion to principle was shallow.) Crittenden moved that this altered version of his plan be submitted to a national plebiscite. When Pennsylvania Congressman James T. Hale suggested to Lincoln a compromise like Crittenden’s revised proposal, he patiently explained why he opposed extending the Missouri Compromise line: “We have just carried an election on
principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten, before we take the offices. In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass, till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union. They now have the Constitution, under which we have lived over seventy years, and acts of Congress of their own framing, with no prospect of their being changed; and they can never have a more shallow pretext for breaking up the government, or extorting a compromise, than now. There is, in my judgment, but one compromise which would really settle the slavery question, and that would be a prohibition against acquiring any more territory.”191
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 127
