But all these urgings were founded upon neglect to consider the all-controlling fact that the conflict between slavery and anti-slavery had become actually irrepressible, with the added element of what Charles Sumner called a "sacred animosity."
There was an active, aggressive, anti-slavery minority at the North whose members cared not one pin-point's worth for the Union except in so far as they hoped to use its power for the abolition of slavery in any way and upon any terms that might be available. They had already declared their hostility to the Constitution, and the insertion of Mr. Crittenden's amendments into that document would have served only to intensify their hatred of it and to stimulate their purpose to be rid of it. On the other hand there was an active and ceaselessly aggressive pro-slavery party at the South whose members were resolutely bent upon the destruction of the Union in order that a new Republic might be founded with African slavery as its corner stone.
Between these two radical parties there could be no peace and no neutral ground upon which to negotiate a peace. Each held the Union in contempt—the one because the Constitution protected slavery, the other because it did not adequately protect that institution. Each was ready to sacrifice the Union if by such sacrifice it might achieve its cherished purposes. The one had decried the Union and its Constitution as "a league with death and a covenant with hell" but now clung to it as a power that might be conveniently used for the accomplishment of cherished purposes. The other had despaired of its hope of using the Federal power further for its own ends. The Southern extremists wished to destroy the Union in order that its power might not be used for the extirpation of slavery; the Northern extremists, who had formerly been equally willing to "let the Union slide," were now eager for its preservation in order that its tremendous potentialities of force and compulsion might be employed in behalf of that extirpation of slavery for which alone they cared.
Neither of these extreme parties in the least degree sympathized with any effort to preserve the Union for its own sake by measures of compromise and reconciliation. The Northern radicals wanted the South to secede in order that military force might be employed for the compulsory abolition of slavery. The Southern radicals wanted the Union dissolved in order that slavery might be no further interfered with.
Neither at the North nor at the South were the radicals even yet in a majority. But in both sections they held a sort of balance of power and in both they were in effect dominant.
Under such conditions, with a conflict so truly and hopelessly irrepressible confronting the country, what conceivable hope was there of a peaceful adjustment by means of Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, or by any other means that patriotic ingenuity might devise?
The first gun had not yet been fired, but there was war on, nevertheless, and no paper resolutions however plausibly phrased could stop its progress to the cannon and musket stage.
Mr. Crittenden's proposal of Amendments to the Constitution did not and could not command the two-thirds majority in Congress necessary to their submission to the several states for ratification. The cry of the Northern extremists was "No backing down! No inch of concession to the slave power! No surrender of the fruits of the victory we have won!" The cry of the Southern radicals was: "There is no use in paper guarantees! We cannot trust them! Our enemies have not kept faith in the past and will not keep faith in the future. Let us abandon the hopeless effort for compromises that cannot be enforced! Let us secede and set up a new republic of our own!"
Then came Virginia into the breach, as she had so often come before. Standing as she did for conservatism and for that Union which her legislature had been the first to suggest and which her statesmen had done so much to bring into beneficent being, she appealed to the sentiment of Union and patriotism throughout the land. Her legislature asked that all the states should appoint delegates to a great peace conference at Washington, whose statesmanlike duty it should be to devise and agree upon some plan of adjustment by which the danger that overshadowed the Republic might be averted. This appeal for peace was made on the nineteenth day of January, 1861—more than a fortnight before the date appointed for the election of a constitutional convention in Virginia to consider the crisis.
It is idle to speculate upon the "might have been." What actually happened was that many of the states appointed to that peace conference delegates of radical views and intemperate minds, whose endeavors from first to last were ceaselessly devoted not to the task of finding a way out, but to the preconceived purpose of defeating the objects of the peace conference.
In the end a committee of that body did indeed recommend a policy practically identical with that outlined in Mr. Crittenden's proposed amendments to the Constitution. But the extremists on both sides and especially the politicians on both sides who sniffed preferment in the air of radicalism, were by that time so far dominant that the proposal came to nothing. It failed of acceptance in either house of Congress when put to a vote within a brief time before the end of the session.
Nevertheless Virginia still resolutely held out against secession and five other border states stood by her in that patriotic attitude for a month and a half more.
Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated on the fourth of March, and straightway there set in a rivalry among the Republican leaders for the control of his administration. Even those who had most actively aided in his election gravely misunderstood and seriously underestimated the character of the man they had chosen to be president. They assumed from the beginning that somebody, other than himself, must direct his administration, and there was eager rivalry among them to usurp that function.
They did not know Abraham Lincoln or realize his intellectual or moral power. The extreme abolitionists beset him with plans to make war upon the seceding states with the avowed purpose of abolishing slavery in all the states by the high hand and without regard to that Constitution which they had declared to be a "league with death and a covenant with hell." To these Mr. Lincoln replied that while they were free to advocate any policy they pleased, he at least, was bound by his official oath to support and maintain the Constitution of the United States. In the end, of course, and when strenuous war was on he did indeed take a different view. As a "war measure" he in the end proclaimed emancipation, without even a pretense of constitutional authority to do so, and indeed in direct defiance of the Constitution. But at least he hesitated to do this, and waited before doing it until the exigencies of an uncertain war seemed to force that extreme measure upon him as one of national self-defense.
At the first he decided as his fixed policy to assert the authority of the National Government in the seceding states, to insist upon the enforcement of the laws there, to recover such government property as those states had seized upon and to use such force as might be required for these ends. He clearly understood that there were men by hundreds of thousands in the North who would stand by him in an endeavor thus to restore and maintain the Union, but who would instantly and angrily desert him should he proclaim a war for the extirpation of slavery within the states in which that institution constitutionally existed.
Accordingly he addressed all his endeavors solely to the task of asserting and maintaining the national authority in the seceding states.
Had all the Southern states seceded before he assumed office his problem would have been an easy one. He would simply have had to call upon the Northern states for military forces sufficient to carry out this program of law enforcement. But Virginia had not seceded, and five other Southern states had submitted their course to Virginia's decision. Virginia was anxiously busying herself to find some ground of reconciliation, some means of accomplishing that preservation of the Union which Mr. Lincoln had declared to be his own and only object of endeavor.
But if Mr. Lincoln was to enforce the laws in the seceding states, and thus to maintain the Union, he must have troops. The little regular army could not furnish them. Either the militia must be called out or volunteers must be summoned for the purpose.
Mr. Lincoln
