James Ford Rhodes (1848–1927). History of the Civil War, 1861–1865. 1917.
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bonfires, pistol firing, fireworks, illuminations, cries of joy and exultation greeted the passage of the Ordinance, which seemed to the people of Charleston to mark the commencement of a revolution as glorious as that of 1776. 1 1 Meanwhile the United States Senate, through an able and representative committee of thirteen, was at work on a compromise in the spirit of earlier days. In 1820, according to Jefferson, the knell of the Union had been rung; the slavery question, said he, “like a fire-bell in the night awakened and filled me with terror.” But then the Missouri Compromise had saved the Union. 2 Again, in 1850 when the South and the North were in bitter opposition on the same issue of slavery and threats of dissolution of the Union were freely made by Southern men, the controversy was ended by Clay’s Compromise. 3 And now in 1860 the people of the Northern and of the border slave States, ardent for the preservation of the Union, believed that Congress could somehow compose the dispute as it had done twice before. The Senate committee of thirteen at once took up the only expedient that could be expected to retain the six remaining cotton States in the Union. 4 This was the Crittenden Compromise, called after its author, a senator from Kentucky; and the portion of it on which union or disunion turned was the article regarding territorial slavery. Crittenden proposed as a constitutional amendment that the old Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30´ should serve as the boundary between slavery and freedom in the Territories; north of it slavery should be prohibited, south of it protected. As phrased, the article was| Note 1. III, 114–125, 192–206; Lect., 65 et seq. [back] |
| Note 2. I, 39 et ante. [back] |
| Note 3. I, Chap. II. [back] |
| Note 4. I class as cotton States, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. [back] |