North America - Volume 1 By Anthony Trollope 




















































































































































 -   Of Mr. Crittenden's own family, some have
gone with secession and some with the Union.  His name had been
honorably - Page 132
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Of Mr. Crittenden's Own Family, Some Have Gone With Secession And Some With The Union.

His name had been honorably connected with American politics for nearly forty years, and it is not surprising that

He should have desired a compromise. His terms were in fact these - a return to the Missouri compromise, under which the Union pledged itself that no slavery should exist north of 36.30 degrees N. lat., unless where it had so existed prior to the date of that compromise; a pledge that Congress would not interfere with slavery in the individual States - which under the Constitution it cannot do; and a pledge that the Fugitive Slave Law should be carried out by the Northern States. Such a compromise might seem to make very small demand on the forbearance of the Republican party, which was now dominant. The repeal of the Missouri compromise had been to them a loss, and it might be said that its re-enactment would be a gain. But since that compromise had been repealed, vast territories south of the line in question had been added to the union, and the re-enactment of that compromise would hand those vast regions over to absolute slavery, as had been done with Texas. This might be all very well for Mr. Crittenden in the slave State of Kentucky - for Mr. Crittenden, although a slave owner, desired to perpetuate the Union; but it would not have been well for New England or for the West. As for the second proposition, it is well understood that under the Constitution Congress cannot interfere in any way in the question of slavery in the individual States. Congress has no more constitutional power to abolish slavery in Maryland than she has to introduce it into Massachusetts. No such pledge, therefore, was necessary on either side. But such a pledge given by the North and West would have acted as an additional tie upon them, binding them to the finality of a constitutional enactment to which, as was of course well known, they strongly object. There was no question of Congress interfering with slavery, with the purport of extending its area by special enactment, and therefore by such a pledge the North and West could gain nothing; but the South would in prestige have gained much.

But that third proposition as to the Fugitive Slave Law and the faithful execution of that law by the Northern and Western States would, if acceded to by Mr. Lincoln's party, have amounted to an unconditional surrender of everything. What! Massachusetts and Connecticut carry out the Fugitive Slave Law? Ohio carry out the Fugitive Slave Law after the "Dred Scott" decision and all its consequences? Mr. Crittenden might as well have asked Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Ohio to introduce slavery within their own lands. The Fugitive Slave Law was then, as it is now, the law of the land; it was the law of the United States as voted by Congress, and passed by the President, and acted on by the supreme judge of the United States Court. But it was a law to which no free State had submitted itself, or would submit itself. "What!" the English reader will say, "sundry States in the Union refuse to obey the laws of the Union - refuse to submit to the constitutional action of their own Congress?" Yes. Such has been the position of this country! To such a dead lock has it been brought by the attempted but impossible amalgamation of North and South. Mr. Crittenden's compromise was moonshine. It was utterly out of the question that the free States should bind themselves to the rendition of escaped slaves, or that Mr. Lincoln, who had just been brought in by their voices, should agree to any compromise which should attempt so to bind them. Lord Palmerston might as well attempt to reenact the Corn Laws.

Then comes the question whether Mr. Lincoln or his government could have prevented the war after he had entered upon his office in March, 1861? I do not suppose that any one thinks that he could have avoided secession and avoided the war also; that by any ordinary effort of government he could have secured the adhesion of the Gulf States to the Union after the first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter. The general opinion in England is, I take it, this - that secession then was manifestly necessary, and that all the blood-shed and money-shed, and all this destruction of commerce and of agriculture might have been prevented by a graceful adhesion to an indisputable fact. But there are some facts, even some indisputable facts, to which a graceful adherence is not possible. Could King Bomba have welcomed Garibaldi to Naples? Can the Pope shake hands with Victor Emmanuel? Could the English have surrendered to their rebel colonists peaceable possession of the colonies? The indisputability of a fact is not very easily settled while the circumstances are in course of action by which the fact is to be decided. The men of the Northern States have not believed in the necessity of secession, but have believed it to be their duty to enforce the adherence of these States to the Union. The American governments have been much given to compromises, but had Mr. Lincoln attempted any compromise by which any one Southern State could have been let out of the Union, he would have been impeached. In all probability the whole Constitution would have gone to ruin, and the Presidency would have been at an end. At any rate, his Presidency would have been at an end. When secession, or in other words rebellion, was once commenced, he had no alternative but the use of coercive measures for putting it down - that is, he had no alternative but war. It is not to be supposed that he or his ministry contemplated such a war as has existed - with 600,000 men in arms on one side, each man with his whole belongings maintained at a cost of 150l. per annum, or ninety millions sterling per annum for the army.

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