I Do
Believe That Had Mr. Lincoln At That Time Submitted Himself To A
Compromise In Favor Of The Democrats, Promising The Support Of The
Government To Certain Acts Which Would In Fact Have Been In Favor
Of Slavery, South Carolina Would Again Have Been Foiled For The
Time.
For it must be understood, that though South Carolina and
the Gulf States might have accepted certain compromises, they would
not have been satisfied in so accepting them.
The desired
secession, and nothing short of secession, would in truth have been
acceptable to them. But in doing so Mr. Lincoln would have been
the most dishonest politician even in America. The North would
have been in arms against him; and any true spirit of agreement
between the cotton-growing slave States and the manufacturing
States of the North, or the agricultural States of the West, would
have been as far off and as improbable as it is now. Mr.
Crittenden, who proffered his compromise to the Senate in December,
1860, was at that time one of the two Senators from Kentucky, a
slave State. He now sits in the Lower House of Congress as a
member from the same State. Kentucky is one of those border States
which has found it impossible to secede, and almost equally
impossible to remain in the Union. It is one of the States into
which it was most probable that the war would be carried - Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri being the three States which have suffered
the most in this way.
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