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

[223] request the several States to revise their statutes, to ascertain whether any of them were in conflict with the Fugitive Slave Act, and, if so, to repeal them forthwith.

The consideration of reports and propositions concerning pacification occupied a large portion of the session, and nearly every debater in both Houses of Congress was engaged in the discussion. It was fairly opened in the Senate on the 7th of January,

1861.

when Mr. Crittenden called up a resolution which he had offered on the 2d, to provide by law for submitting his proposed amendments to the Constitution to a vote of the people. He saw no chance for any agreement on the subject in Congress, and he perceived no other course for him to pursue than to make an appeal to the people. He earnestly desired to save the Union and prevent civil war. He felt that the danger to which the Republic was exposed was imminent, and he pleaded earnestly for the people to take care of the Constitution and the Union, saying:--“The Constitution will take care of you; the Union will be sure to protect and preserve you.” He proposed, he said, to take the Slavery question from Congress forever. He did not think he was asking any one to make concessions, but only to grant equal rights. He was opposed to secession, as a violation of the law and the Constitution. “If a State wishes to secede,” he said, “let them proclaim revolution boldly, and not attempt to hide themselves under little subtleties of law, and claim the right of secession. A constitutional right to break the Constitution was a new doctrine.”

Senator Toombs followed Senator Crittenden. His speech was characteristic of the man-coarse, treasonable, and defiant. “The Abolitionists,” he said, “have for long years been sowing dragons' teeth, and they have finally got a crop of armed men. The Union, Sir, is dissolved. That is a fixed fact lying in the way of this discussion; and men may as well hear it. One of your confederates [South Carolina] has already wisely, bravely, boldly, met the public danger and confronted it. She is only ahead and beyond any of her sisters because of her greater facility of action. The great majority of those sister States, under like circumstances, consider her cause as their cause.” He then declared that “the patriotic men of the country,” having appealed to the Constitution, to justice, and to fraternity in vain, were “prepared for the arbitrament of the sword. Now, Sir,” he said, “you may see the glitter of the bayonet and hear the tramp of armed men from your Capital to the Rio Grande.”

Toombs then proceeded, with great insolence of speech and manner, to define his own position and demands. “They are what you,” he said, “who talk of constitutional right, call treason. I believe that is the term. I believe for all the acts which the Republican party call treason and rebellion, there stands before them as good a traitor and as good a rebel as ever descended from revolutionary loins. What does this rebel demand?” The right, he said, of going into all the Territories with slaves, as property, and that property to be protected there by the National Government. “Shall I not do it?” he asked. “You say No. You and the Senate say No; the House says No; and throughout the length and breadth of your whole conspiracy against the Constitution, there is one shout of No! It is the price of my allegiance. Withhold it, and you can't get my obedience. There is ”