The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [94]
To the surprise of secessionists and many northerners, even President James Buchanan refused to recognize the legality of secession. His annual message to Congress in early December insisted that Lincoln’s election did not constitute a “just cause” for dissolving the Union. Buchanan approved an attempt to resupply federal troops stationed at Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. The Star of the West sailed from New York on January 5, 1861, but was driven away by fire from the shore three days later. Ironically, as southerners resigned from government posts, Buchanan ended his presidency presiding over a northern, Unionist administration.31
When Congress assembled early in December 1860, members brought forth compromise proposals of every description. One barred future legislation related in any way to slavery; another called for replacing the office of president with an executive council elected from different regions of the country; a third would establish a national police to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. One member of Congress presented no fewer than seventeen constitutional amendments, protecting slavery from every conceivable interference. The House and Senate appointed committees to sift through the proposals.
The most widely supported plan emanated from John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. It consisted of six unamendable constitutional amendments designed to deal with all the points at which federal authority touched slavery. Crittenden’s plan would deny Congress the power to abolish slavery in the states or on government property such as military forts; bar abolition in the District of Columbia unless Virginia and Maryland emancipated their own slaves; prevent federal interference with the interstate slave trade; and extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean so as to divide between freedom and slavery all current territories and any “hereafter acquired.” At the end of December, Stephen A. Douglas endorsed Crittenden’s proposals and added his own elements. Douglas’s plan required a vote by two-thirds of Congress for the acquisition of new territory; prohibited states from conferring the right to vote on free blacks (South Carolina had listed the grant of suffrage to blacks in some northern states as one of its grievances in its Ordinance of Secession); and provided federal aid to any state that wished to “remove” its free black population to Africa or South America. Douglas also revived the “sedition” bill he had introduced in the previous session, criminalizing speeches and writings hostile to slavery.32
With Lincoln in Springfield, William H. Seward assumed the self-appointed role of party leader in Washington. On January 12, 1861, Seward gave a widely anticipated Senate speech before packed galleries and the “whole diplomatic corps,” pleading for calm and offering his own list of concessions to the South, including the repeal of northern personal liberty laws; an amendment barring any future change in the Constitution to give Congress power over slavery in the states; and a promise that within two years a national convention would be called to resolve other disputed matters. Later that month, Seward and Charles Francis Adams, who represented Massachusetts in the House, proposed the immediate admission of New Mexico as a slave state as a further step toward reconciliation.33
Given his radical reputation, Seward’s stance came as a surprise to many observers. “What do you think of Seward?” Carl Schurz wrote to his wife. “The mighty is fallen. He bows before the slave power.” Seward insisted that his proposals would strengthen Unionists in the eight Upper South slave states that had