Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/16

too recent and too familiarly known to require more than this passing allusion." (Lunt, 328.) Was there anything in all this calculated to discourage such attempts for the future? On the contrary, would it not be apt to stir up still more deeply excited minds, and the next attempt would probably have caused much more suffering. To expect that the attempt to cast a lighted match into a powder magazine would fail more than once, would be chimerical indeed. In considering the value of his defences under the constitution, a Southern man could not well forget that Mr. Seward, the leader of the party in power, had not only declared the conflict between freedom and slavery to be "irrepressible," but had affirmed there was a higher law than the constitution, to which the later must yield, or that the famous Helper book, endorsed and recommended generally by the Republican members of Congress, declared that "our own banner is inscribed: 'no co-operatian with slaveholders in politics; no fellowship with them in religion; no affiliation with them in society; no recognition of pro-slavery men, except as ruffians, outlaws and criminals.'" Again: "we are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards." With such a history of the administration of the constitution by the party in power, there was no very pleasant outlook for the slaveholders in the future. Had he any hope from amendments? That no effort to save the Union should be spared, Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, introduced certain resolutions proposing amendments to the constitution, which would have saved the Union, and which received every Southern vote except the South Carolina senators, who had withdrawn. They proposed to adopt, in effect, the Missouri compromise line, to prohibit Congress from abolishing the slave trade between the States, or slavery in places where the United States had exclusive jurisdiction, or in the District of "Columbia, without the consent of Maryland and of the slaveholders, and proposed a more effectual provision for the recovery of fugitive slaves. For these, a substitute was offered by Mr. Clark, of New Hampshire, declaring, amongst other things, that the provisions of the constitution are ample for the preservation of the Union, and the resolutions of Mr. Crittenden were voted down, and the substitute adopted by a united vote of the Republicans. Says Lunt: "The vote of the Republican members of the Senate was a blank denial of the necessity of compromise, and showed, of course, that they had deliberately made up their minds to refuse any negotiations." (Lunt's Origin of the War, p. 411.) The adoption of Mr. Crittenden's resolutions, it was said by Mr. Douglass, would have