Benson J. Lossing, Pictorial Field Book of the Civil War. Volume 1.

The seditious suggestions of this Mayor, and the opposing and defiant tone of the Legislature, alarmed the commercial classes and large capitalists, and these hastened to seek some method for pacifying the Southern insurgents. War seemed inevitable. Its besom would sweep thousands of the debtors of New York merchants and manufacturers in the Slave-labor States into the mill of absolute ruin, and millions of dollars' worth of bills receivable in the hands of their creditors must be made as worthless as so much soiled white paper. This material consideration, and an almost universal desire for peace and quiet, developed a quick willingness to make every concession to the demands of the discontented Southerners consistent with honor. As an expression of this feeling, and with the hope of practical results, a memorial for compromise measures, largely signed by merchants, manufacturers, and capitalists, was forwarded to Congress on the 12th of January. The memorialists prayed that body to legislate so as to give assurances “with any required guaranties,” to the slaveholders, that their right to regulate Slavery within the borders of their respective States should be secured; that the Fugitive Slave Law should be faithfully executed; that Personal Liberty Acts in “possible conflict” with that law should be “readjusted ;” and that they should have half the Territories, whereof to organize Slave-labor States. They were assured, the memorialists said, that such measures would “restore peace to their agitated country.”

This memorial was followed by another, adopted on the 18th of January, at a meeting of merchants in the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce, similar in tone to the other, and substantially recommending the “Crittenden Compromise” as a basis for pacification. They appointed a committee to take charge of the memorial, to procure signatures to it, and forward it to Congress. It was taken to Washington early in February, with forty thousand names attached to it.

On the 28th of January, an immense meeting of citizens was held at the Cooper Institute, in New York, when it was resolved to send three Commissioners to six of the “seceded States,” instructed to confer with the “delegates of the people,” in convention assembled, in regard to “the best measures calculated to restore the peace and integrity of the Union.” James T. Brady, Cornelius K. Garrison, and Appleton Oaksmith were appointed such Commissioners. At about the same time, the “Democratic State Central Committee” called for the appointment of four delegates from each