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

[228] time until the last days of the session, when many of the conspirators had left Congress and gone home.

On the 2d of March, two days before the close of the session, Mason of Virginia called up the Crittenden resolutions in the Senate, when Clarke's substitute¹ was reconsidered and rejected, for the purpose of obtaining a direct vote on the original proposition. After a long debate, continuing until late in the “small hours” of Sunday morning,

March 3, 1861.

the Crittenden Compromise was finally rejected by a vote of twenty against nineteen.² It might have been carried had the conspirators retained their seats. The question was then taken in the Senate on a resolution of the House of Representatives, to amend the Constitution so as to prohibit forever any amendment of that instrument interfering with slavery in any State. This resolution was adopted.

In the atmosphere of to-day, made clear by the tempest of war, we perceive that this result was most auspicious. We may now see clearly the peril to which the nation would have been subjected had that Compromise, or kindred propositions for perpetuating and nationalizing slavery, been adopted. Had the Constitution been amended in accordance with the propositions of the patriotic but short-sighted Crittenden, the Republic would have been bound in the fetters of one of the most relentless and degrading despotisms that ever disgraced the annals of mankind.

On the 12th of January, the conspirators commenced withdrawing from Congress. On that day the Representatives of the State of Mississippi sent in a communication to the Speaker, saying they had been informed of the secession of their State, and that, while they regretted the occasion for that action, they approved the measure. Two days afterward,

January 14.

Albert G. Brown, one of the, Senators from Mississippi, withdrew from active participation in the business of the Senate. His colleague, Jefferson Davis, did not take his leave, on account of sickness, until the 21st, when he made a parting speech. He declared his devotion to the doctrine of State Supremacy to be so zealous, that if he believed his State had no just cause for leaving the Union, he should feel bound by its action to follow its destiny. He thought it had just cause for withdrawing, and declared that he had counseled the people (in other words, the politicians) of that State to do as they had done. He drew a distinction between nullification and secession, and asserted, in the face of history and common sense, that Calhoun advocated nullification in order to save the Union! With the most transparent sophistry he then argued in favor of the right of secession, and against the prevailing idea, that when the preamble of the Declaration of Independence asserts that “all men are created equal,” it means all without distinction of race or country. Then, with a wicked perversion of the plainest teachings of history, he said:--“When you deny to us the right to withdraw from a ”