The Peace Conference of 1861 was a meeting of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., on the eve of the American Civil War. The conference's purpose was to avoid, if possible, the secession of the eight slave states from the upper and border South that had not done so as of that date. The seven states that had already seceded did not attend.
Before the 1860 election, Republicans were excitedly predicting the end of slavery even in the south. [1] Republican President Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 led many in the South to conclude that now was the time for their long-discussed secession. Many pro-slavery southerners, especially in the Lower South, were convinced that the new Republican government was determined to abolish slavery where it already existed. [2]
In much of the South, elections were held to select delegates to special conventions to consider secession from the Union. In Congress, efforts were made in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to compromise over the issues relating to slavery dividing the nation.
In December 1860, the final session of the Thirty-sixth Congress met. In the House, the Committee of Thirty-Three, with one member from each state, led by Ohio Republican Thomas Corwin, was formed to reach a compromise to preserve the Union. In the Senate, former Kentucky Whig John J. Crittenden, elected as a Unionist candidate, submitted the Crittenden Compromise, six proposed constitutional amendments and four resolutions that would guarantee the permanent existence of slavery in the slave states and that Crittenden hoped would address all the outstanding issues. Hopes were high, especially in the border states, that the lame duck Congress could reach a successful resolution before the new Republican administration took office.
Crittenden's proposals were debated by a specially selected Committee of Thirteen. The proposals provided for, among other things, an extension of the Missouri Compromise line dividing the territories to the Pacific Ocean, bringing his efforts directly in conflict with the 1860 Republican Platform and the personal views of President-elect Abraham Lincoln, who had made known his objections. The committee rejected the compromise on December 22 by a 7–6 vote. Crittenden later brought the issue to the floor of the Senate as a proposal to make his compromise subject to a national referendum. Still, the Senate rejected it on January 16 by a 25–23. [3]
A modified version of the Crittenden Plan, believed to be more attractive to Republicans,[ further explanation needed ] was considered by an ad hoc committee of 14 congressmen from the lower North and the upper South, meeting several times between December 28 and January 4. The committee was chaired again by Crittenden and included other Southern Unionists such as Representatives John A. Gilmer of North Carolina, Robert H. Hatton of Tennessee, J. Morrison Harris of Maryland, and John T. Harris of Virginia. The House rejected a version of their work on January 7. [4]
In the House, on January 14, the Committee of Thirty-Three reported that it had reached a majority agreement on a constitutional amendment to protect slavery where it existed and the immediate admission of New Mexico Territory as a slave state. This latter proposal would result in a de facto extension of the Missouri Compromise line for all existing territories. [5]
A fourth attempt came from Virginia, one of the slave states that had not yet seceded. Former President John Tyler, a private citizen of Virginia who was still much interested in the fate of the nation, had been appointed as a special Virginia envoy to President James Buchanan to urge him to maintain the status quo regarding the seceded states. Later, Tyler was an elected delegate to the Virginia convention called to consider whether or not to follow the Deep South states out of the Union. [6] Tyler thought a final collective effort should be made to preserve the Union. In a document published on January 17, 1861, he called for a convention of the six free and six slave border states to resolve the sectional split. Governor John Letcher of Virginia had already made a similar request to the state legislature. He agreed to sponsor the convention while the list of attendees to all states was expanded. [7] Corwin agreed to hold off any final vote on his House plan pending the final actions of the peace conference. [8]
The conference convened on February 4, 1861, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.; all seven Deep South states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas) had already passed ordinances of secession, were preparing to form a new government in Montgomery, Alabama, and did not attend the peace conference, not believing it would accomplish anything significant. At the same time that Tyler, selected to head the convention, was making his opening remarks in Washington, his granddaughter was ceremonially hoisting the flag for the Confederate convention in Montgomery. No delegates were sent by the Deep South states or by Arkansas, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, or Oregon. Fourteen free states and seven slave states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) were represented. Among the representatives to the conference were James A. Seddon and William Cabell Rives from Virginia, David Wilmot from Pennsylvania, Francis Granger from New York, Reverdy Johnson from Maryland, William P. Fessenden and Lot M. Morrill from Maine, James Guthrie and William O. Butler from Kentucky, David S. Reid from North Carolina, Stephen T. Logan from Illinois, Alvan Cullom from Tennessee, and Thomas Ewing and Salmon P. Chase from Ohio. Many of the delegates came in the belief that they could be successful, but many others, from both sides of the spectrum, came simply as "watchdogs" for their sectional interests. The 131 delegates included "six former cabinet members, nineteen ex-governors, fourteen former senators, fifty former representatives, twelve state supreme court justices, and one former president", and the meeting was frequently referred to derisively as the Old Gentleman's Convention. [9]
On February 6, a committee was formed, charged with drafting a proposal for the entire convention to consider. The committee consisted of one representative from each state and was headed by James Guthrie of Kentucky. The convention met for three weeks, and its final product was a proposed seven-point constitutional amendment that differed little from the Crittenden Compromise. The key issue, slavery in the territories, was addressed simply by extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean, with no provision for newly acquired territory. That section passed by a 9–8 vote of the states, each with one vote. [10]
Other features of the proposed constitutional amendment were the requirement for the acquisition of all future territories to be approved by a majority of both the slave states and the free states, a prohibition on Congress passing any legislation that would affect the status of slavery where it currently existed, a prohibition on state legislatures from passing laws that would restrict the ability of officials to apprehend and return fugitive slaves, a permanent prohibition on the foreign slave trade, and 100% compensation to any master whose fugitive slave was freed by illegal mob action or intimidation of officials required to administer the Fugitive Slave Act. Key sections of this amendment could be further amended only with the unanimous concurrence of all states. [11]
Since it did not pledge to limit the expansion of slavery in new territories, the compromise failed to satisfy most Republicans. In not committing to permit and protect slavery in the territories, the compromise failed to address the issue that had divided the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions in the 1860 presidential elections. The convention's work was completed with only a few days left in the final session of Congress. The proposal was rejected in the Senate in a 28–7 vote and never came to a vote in the House. [12] The Committee of Thirty-Three finally submitted the Corwin Amendment, a less-encompassing constitutional amendment, which Congress passed. The proposed amendment protected slavery where it currently existed, which Lincoln and most members of both parties already believed was a state right protected by the existing US Constitution. A bill for New Mexico statehood was tabled by a vote of 115–71, with opposition from Southern Democrats and Republicans.
With the adjournment of Congress and the inauguration of Lincoln as president, the only avenue for compromise involved informal negotiations between Unionist Southerners and representatives of the incoming Republican government, and Congress was no longer a factor. A final convention of only the slave states in the Union scheduled for June 1861 never occurred because of the events at Fort Sumter [ citation needed ]. Robert H. Hatton, a Unionist from Tennessee who would later change sides, summed up the feelings of many shortly before Congress adjourned:
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 was a territorial organic act that created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It was drafted by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas, passed by the 33rd United States Congress, and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce. Douglas introduced the bill intending to open up new lands to develop and facilitate the construction of a transcontinental railroad. However, the Kansas–Nebraska Act effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, stoking national tensions over slavery and contributing to a series of armed conflicts known as "Bleeding Kansas".
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. Lincoln's election thus served as the main catalyst of the states that would become the Confederacy seceding from the Union. This marked the first time that a Republican was elected president. It was also the first presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1904, 1920, 1940, 1944, and 2016.
The Wilmot Proviso was an unsuccessful 1846 proposal in the United States Congress to ban slavery in territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican–American War. The conflict over the Wilmot Proviso was one of the major events leading to the American Civil War.
A consensus of historians who address the origins of the American Civil War agree that the preservation of the institution of slavery was the principal aim of the eleven Southern states that declared their secession from the United States and united to form the Confederate States of America. However, while historians in the 21st century agree on the centrality of the conflict over slavery, they disagree sharply on which aspects of this conflict were most important, and on the North's reasons for refusing to allow the Southern states to secede. Proponents of the pseudo-historical Lost Cause ideology have denied that slavery was the principal cause of the secession, a view that has been disproven by the overwhelming historical evidence against it, notably the seceding states' own secession documents.
In the American Civil War (1861–65), the border states were four, later five, slave states that primarily supported the Union. They were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and after 1863, the new state of West Virginia. To their north they bordered free states of the Union, and all but Delaware bordered slave states of the Confederacy to their south.
John Jordan Crittenden was an American statesman and politician from the U.S. state of Kentucky. He represented the state in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and twice served as United States Attorney General in the administrations of William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. He was also the 17th governor of Kentucky and served in the state legislature. Although frequently mentioned as a potential candidate for the U.S. presidency, he never consented to run for the office.
The Corwin Amendment is a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that has never been adopted, but owing to the absence of a ratification deadline, could still be adopted by the state legislatures. It would shield slavery within the states from the federal constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment does not explicitly use the word slavery, it was designed specifically to protect slavery from federal power. The outgoing 36th United States Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, shortly before the outbreak of the American Civil War, with the intent of preventing that war and preserving the Union. It passed Congress but was not ratified by the requisite number of state legislatures.
The Constitutional Union Party was a United States third party active during the 1860 elections. It consisted of conservative former Whigs, largely from the Southern United States, who wanted to avoid secession over the slavery issue and refused to join either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. The Constitutional Union Party campaigned on a simple platform "to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the Enforcement of the Laws".
The Crittenden Compromise was an unsuccessful proposal to permanently enshrine slavery in the United States Constitution, and thereby make it unconstitutional for future congresses to end slavery. It was introduced by United States Senator John J. Crittenden on December 18, 1860. It aimed to resolve the secession crisis of 1860–1861 that eventually led to the American Civil War by addressing the fears and grievances of Southern pro-slavery factions, and by quashing anti-slavery activities. The Crittenden Compromise is not to be confused with the Crittenden Resolution, which provided that the Union would take no actions against slavery.
The 36th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1859, to March 4, 1861, during the third and fourth years of James Buchanan's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 United States census. The Senate had a Democratic majority, and the House had a Republican plurality.
The Virginia Conventions have been the assemblies of delegates elected for the purpose of establishing constitutions of fundamental law for the Commonwealth of Virginia superior to General Assembly legislation. Their constitutions and subsequent amendments span four centuries across the territory of modern-day Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky.
The U.S. state of West Virginia was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War, in which it became the only modern state to have declared its independence from the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861, Union troops, which included a number of newly formed Western Virginia regiments, under General George McClellan drove off Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Philippi in Barbour County. This essentially freed Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form a functioning government of their own as a result of the Wheeling Convention. Before the admission of West Virginia as a state, the government in Wheeling formally claimed jurisdiction over all of Virginia, although from its creation it was firmly committed to the formation of a separate state.
The American state of Virginia became a prominent part of the Confederacy when it joined during the American Civil War. As a Southern slave-holding state, Virginia held the state convention to deal with the secession crisis and voted against secession on April 4, 1861. Opinion shifted after the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, and April 15, when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln called for troops from all states still in the Union to put down the rebellion. For all practical purposes, Virginia joined the Confederacy on April 17, though secession was not officially ratified until May 23. A Unionist government was established in Wheeling and the new state of West Virginia was created by an act of Congress from 50 counties of western Virginia, making it the only state to lose territory as a consequence of the war. Unionism was indeed strong also in other parts of the State, and during the war the Restored Government of Virginia was created as rival to the Confederate Government of Virginia, making it one of the states to have 2 governments during the Civil War.
The Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1861–1863 was a constitutional convention held in the state of Missouri during the American Civil War. The convention was elected in early 1861, and voted against secession. When open fighting broke out between Pro-Confederate governor Claiborne Fox Jackson and Union authorities, and Union forces occupied the state capital, the convention formed a provisional state government, and functioned as a quasi-legislature for several years. The convention never did produce a new constitution; that task was delegated to a new convention, elected in 1864.
The presidency of Abraham Lincoln began on March 4, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th president of the United States, and ended upon his assassination and death on April 15, 1865, 42 days into his second term. Lincoln was the first member of the recently established Republican Party elected to the presidency. Lincoln successfully presided over the Union victory in the American Civil War, which dominated his presidency and resulted in the end of slavery.
The presidency of James Buchanan began on March 4, 1857, when James Buchanan was inaugurated as 15th president of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1861. Buchanan, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, took office as the 15th United States president after defeating former President Millard Fillmore of the American Party, and John C. Frémont of the Republican Party in the 1856 presidential election.
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. A senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party for president in the 1860 presidential election, which was won by Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in the 1858 United States Senate election in Illinois, known for the pivotal Lincoln–Douglas debates. He was one of the brokers of the Compromise of 1850 which sought to avert a sectional crisis; to further deal with the volatile issue of extending slavery into the territories, Douglas became the foremost advocate of popular sovereignty, which held that each territory should be allowed to determine whether to permit slavery within its borders. This attempt to address the issue was rejected by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates. Douglas was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short in physical stature but a forceful and dominant figure in politics.
The political career of John C. Breckinridge included service in the state government of Kentucky, the Federal government of the United States, as well as the government of the Confederate States of America. In 1857, 36 years old, he was inaugurated as Vice President of the United States under James Buchanan. He remains the youngest person to ever hold the office. Four years later, he ran as the presidential candidate of a dissident group of Southern Democrats, but lost the election to the Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
The presidential transition of Abraham Lincoln began when he won the United States 1860 United States presidential election, becoming the president-elect of the United States, and ended when Lincoln was inaugurated at noon on March 4, 1861.
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