March 2, 1861. |
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to incalculable ills ;” and for this reason it earnestly invoked “abstinence from all counsels and measures of compulsion toward them.”
1
After voting thanks to the proprietors of the Hall, who made no charge for its use; to the municipal authorities of Washington City, who agreed to pay all of the expenses of the Convention incurred for printing and stationery; and to the president, “for the dignified and impartial manner” in which he had presided over their deliberations, the delegates listened to a brief farewell address from Mr. Tyler, and then adjourned.2 On the following day, one hundred guns were fired in Washington in honor of the “Convention Compromise.”
The President of the Convention immediately sent a copy of the proposed amendments to the Constitution, adopted by that body, to Vice-President Breckinridge, who laid the matter before the Senate.
It was referred to a Committee of Five, consisting of Senators Crittenden, Bigler, Thomson, Seward, and Trumbull, with instructions to report the next day. Mr. Crittenden reported the propositions of the Convention, when Mr. Seward, for himself and Mr. Trumbull, presented as a substitute a joint resolution, that whereas the Legislatures of the States of Kentucky, New Jersey, and Illinois had applied to Congress to call a convention of the States, for the purpose of proposing amendments to the Constitution, the Legislatures of the other States should be invited to consider and express their will on the subject, in pursuance of the fifth Article of the Constitution.
A long debate ensued; and, finally, on motion of Senator Douglas, it was decided, by a vote of twenty-five to eleven, to postpone the consideration of the “Guthrie plan” in favor of a proposition of amendment adopted by the House of Representatives, which provided that “no amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof.”
In this the Senate concurred, when the Crittenden Compromise, as we have observed,3 was called up and rejected.
Thus ended the vain attempts to conciliate the Slave interest by Congressional
1 See Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention for proposing Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, by Lucius E. Chittenden, one of the delegates, for a full account of all the proceedings of this remarkable Congress.
2 During the session, a delegate from Ohio, the venerable John C. Wright, then seventy-seven years of age, and nearly blind, died quite suddenly. His death occurred on the 13th, when his son, who had been, appointed Secretary to the Convention, returned to Ohio with the remains of his father, and J. H. Puleston served the Convention as Secretary during the remainder of the session.
3 See page 228.
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