Crittenden Compromise

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Not to be confused with Crittenden–Johnson Resolution.

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Events leading to
the American Civil War
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The Crittenden Compromise was an unsuccessful proposal to permanently enshrine

Crittenden Resolution
, which provided that the Union would take no actions against slavery.

Background

The compromise proposed six

constitutional amendments and four congressional resolutions. Crittenden introduced the package on December 18.[1] It was tabled
on December 31.

It guaranteed the permanent existence of slavery in the slave states and addressed Southern demands in regard to fugitive slaves and slavery in the

District of Columbia. It proposed re-instating the Missouri Compromise (which had been functionally repealed in 1854 by the Kansas–Nebraska Act and struck down entirely in 1857 by the Dred Scott decision) and extending the compromise line to the west, with slavery prohibited north of the 36° 30′ parallel and guaranteed south of it. The compromise included a clause that it could not be repealed or amended
.

The compromise was popular among Southern members of the Senate, but it was generally unacceptable to the Republicans, who opposed the expansion of slavery beyond the states where it already existed, into the territories. The opposition of their party's leader, President-elect

territorial expansion of the United States. The New York Times referred to "the whole future growth of the Republic" and "all the Territory that can ever belong to the United States—the whole of Mexico and Central America".[6]

Components

Amendments to the Constitution

Slave and free states & territories in 1858. The 1820 Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30′ N. separated Missouri from the Arkansas Territory, but barred slavery from any new states and territories north of this line and west of Missouri, as did the Crittenden Compromise proposed forty years later. (However, this part of the Compromise of 1820 had been largely negated by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 and the U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in 1857.)
  1. Slavery would be prohibited in any
    African race
    was "hereby recognized" and could not be interfered with by Congress. Furthermore, property in African slaves was to be "protected by all the departments of the territorial government during its continuance". States would be admitted to the Union from any territory with or without slavery as their constitutions provided.
  2. Congress was forbidden to abolish slavery in places under its jurisdiction, such as a military post, within a slave state.
  3. Congress could not abolish slavery in the District of Columbia so long as it existed in the adjoining states of Virginia and Maryland and without the consent of the District's inhabitants. Compensation would be given to owners who refused consent to abolition.
  4. Congress could not prohibit or interfere with the interstate slave trade.
  5. Congress would provide full compensation to owners of rescued fugitive slaves. Congress was empowered to sue the county in which obstruction to the
    fugitive slave laws
    took place to recover payment; the county, in turn, could sue "the wrong doers or rescuers" who prevented the return of the fugitive.
  6. No future amendment of the Constitution could change these amendments or authorize or empower Congress to interfere with slavery within any slave state.[7]

Congressional resolutions

  1. That
    fugitive slave laws
    were constitutional and should be faithfully observed and executed.
  2. That all state laws that impeded the operation of fugitive slave laws, the so-called "Personal liberty laws", were unconstitutional and should be repealed.
  3. That the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 should be amended (and rendered less objectionable to the North) by equalizing the fee schedule for returning or releasing alleged fugitives and limiting the powers of marshals to summon citizens to aid in their capture.
  4. That laws for the suppression of the
    African slave trade should be effectively and thoroughly executed.[7]

Results

Matthew Brady's 1855 photograph of Sen. Crittenden
Crittenden Compromise as legislative quackery - 1860s cartoon

President-elect Abraham Lincoln vehemently opposed the Crittenden compromise on grounds that he opposed any policy permitting the continued expansion of slavery.[8] Both the House of Representatives and the Senate rejected Crittenden's proposal. It was part of a series of last-ditch efforts to provide the Southern states with sufficient reassurances to forestall their secession during the final session of Congress prior to the Lincoln administration taking office.

The Crittenden proposals were also discussed at the Peace Conference of 1861, a meeting of more than 100 of the nation's leading politicians, held February 8–27, 1861, in Washington, D.C. The conference, led by former President John Tyler, was the final formal effort of the states to avert the start of war. There too, the Compromise proposals failed, as the provision guaranteeing slave ownership throughout all Western territories and future acquisitions again proved unpalatable.

A February 1861 editorial in the Charleston Courier (

John William Noell
, whose district included Charleston.

In popular culture

The novel

Ben Winters is set in an alternate history where the Crittenden Compromise was accepted following the assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln.[10]
By the twenty-first century, slavery had been retained in the "Hard Four" states of Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

See also

References

  1. ^ Amendments Proposed in Congress by Senator John J. Crittenden: December 18, 1860 Avalon Project
  2. ^ "Lincoln could not countenance this. 'Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery,' he wrote to key Republican leaders including Seward. Crittenden's compromise 'would lose us everything we gained by the election.'" James M. McPherson, "The Hedgehog and the Foxes," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, vol. 12, issue 1 (1991), pp. 49-65, quotation at p. 53; reprinted in James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, Oxford University Press (1991), pp. 113-130, quotation at p. 118.
  3. first inaugural address
    , he said, "holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable."
  4. ISBN 0-19-516895-X
    .
  5. ISBN 978-0-06-131929-7
    .
  6. ^ "The Crittenden Compromise". The New York Times. February 6, 1861.
  7. ^ a b "Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess. 114 (1860)". Retrieved May 1, 2014.
  8. ^ "The Origins and Outbreak of the Civil War". United States History I. Lumen Learning.
  9. ^ Whitcomb, George (February 1, 1861). "Editorial". Charleston Courier. Charleston, Missouri. p. 2. Retrieved February 16, 2012.
  10. ^
    Ben Winters (March 14, 2019). "What Do the Make-Believe Bureaucracies of Sci-Fi Novels Say About Us?". The New York Times
    . p. 14 of the Sunday Book Review. Retrieved May 24, 2019. I performed a similar maneuver when I was working on my novel 'Underground Airlines' and seeking a historical event that would sweep the Civil War from American history. In the end I needed only to resurrect the Crittenden Compromise, a set of statutes that was really proposed, really debated and really voted down by Congress, thank God, late in 1860.
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