This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
[88]
Territory; that the Missouri Compromise, as to the limits of Slavery, should be revived; that Congress should not have power to abolish the inter-State Slave-trade; that the Fugitive Slave Law should be reaffirmed; that slave-holders might pass unmolested with their slaves through any Free-labor State, and that all nullifying laws of State Legislatures should be inoperative,; also, a declaration that the Constitution was an article of agreement between Sovereign States, and that an attempt of the National Government to, coerce a Sovereign State into obedience to it would be levying war upon a substantial power, and would precipitate a dissolution of the Union.1
Mr. Sickles, who afterward fought the secessionists in arms, as a commanding general, and lost a leg in the fray, proposed an amendment declaring that when a State, in the exercise of its sovereignty, should secede, the Government of the United States should appoint commissioners to confer with duly appointed agents of such State, and agree upon the disposition of the public property and territory belonging to the United States Tying within it, and upon the proportion of the public debt to be assumed and paid by that State; also authorizing the President, when all should be settled, to proclaim the withdrawal of such State from the Union.
This was substantially Clingman's proposition, when he made his seditious speech in the Senate a fortnight before.2
Mr. Hindman, afterward a general in the armies of the conspirators arrayed against the Republic, proposed an amendment that should guarantee the express recognition of slavery wherever it existed; no interference with the inter-State or domestic Slave-trade, from which Virginia was receiving a large annual income; to give free scope for slaveholders with their slaves while traveling in Free-labor States; to prohibit to any State the right of representation in the Congress whose Legislature should pass laws impairing the obligations of the Fugitive Slave Law; to give the Slave-labor States a negative upon all acts of the Congress concerning Slavery; to make these, and all other provisions of the Constitution relating to Slavery, unamendable; and to grant to the several States authority to appoint all National officers within their respective limits.3
Mr. Vallandigham, who was afterward convicted of, and punished for, alleged treasonable acts,4 submitted a proposition for a change in the National Constitution, providing for a division of the Republic into four sections, to be called, respectively, The North, The West, The Pacific, and The South.5 His proposition, says a late writer, “: was the fullest and most logical embodiment yet made of Mr. Calhoun's subtle device for enabling a minority to ”
1 Proceedings of Congress, December 12, 17, and 24, 1860, reported in the Congressional Globe.
2 Proceedings of Congress, December 17, 1860, reported in the Congressional Globe.
3 Proceedings of Congress, December 12, 1860, reported in the Congressional Globe.
4 See Report of his Trial, published by Rickey & Carroll: Cincinnati, Ohio, 1863.
5 Proceedings of Congress, Feb. 7, 1861, reported in Congressional Globe. Mr. Vallandigham proposed the following grouping of States in the four sections:--The North, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The West, Ohio, Indiana,, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Kansas. The Pacific, Oregon and California. The South, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. These were all Slave-labor States.
This scheme for dividing the States, and the accompanying propositions concerning the election of President and Congressmen, was admirably adapted to the uses of the conspirators, for it would make the voice of three hundred thousand slaveholders as potential, politically, as that of twenty millions of non-slaveholders. It was advocated in Congress so late as January, 1863.
Scanned printed text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.