Peace Conference of 1861

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Conference location, Willard's Hotel in Washington DC

The peace conference of 1861 was a gathering of 131 leading American politicians in February 1861, on the eve of the Civil War . Its aim was to reach a compromise on the nation-dividing issues of slavery and to avert secession of the southern states . The Republican Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 presidential election months ago sparked hectic political activity. Many of the southern states held elections for special conventionsheld to decide on the secession. Efforts had been made in both Houses of Congress to resolve the outstanding issues surrounding slavery. The conference was the last attempt by the individual states to come to an agreement. Since seven states of the Deep South had already decided to secede, efforts focused on the eight slave states of the Upper South and Border South with Virginia and Kentucky as the most important.

prehistory

In December 1860, the 36th Congress met for its second and final session. In the House of Representatives , the "Committee of 33" met with one member from each state, chaired by Republican Thomas Corwin from Ohio . In the Senate put the Whig -Politiker John J. Crittenden of Kentucky , who was elected as a Unionist candidate, his design for the so-called Crittenden Compromise ago, the six new Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provided for addressing the hope of all the controversial points would. Hopes, especially in the border states, were high that the reformed Congress could reach a successful deal before the Republican administration took office.

Crittenden's proposals were debated by a specially selected committee of 13 members of the Senate. Among other things, they envisaged an extension of the Missouri Compromise to the Western Territories , which brought them in direct contradiction to Lincoln's election platform of 1860 and his personal intentions. The compromise was rejected by the Committee of 13 on December 22nd with 7 to 6 votes. Crittenden later introduced him directly to the Senate and sought a nationwide referendum on the matter, but the Senate also rejected this move on January 17, with 25 votes to 23.

A modified version of Crittenden's plan, better tailored to the needs of the Republicans, was considered by an ad hoc committee of 14 congressmen from the lower north and upper south in several meetings between December 28 and January 4 . This committee, in turn, was chaired by Crittenden and included other southern unionists such as John A. Gilmer of North Carolina , Robert H. Hatton of Tennessee , J. Morrison Harris of Maryland, and John T. Harris of Virginia. The so-called border state plan, which, unlike Crittenden's original plan, did not provide for an extension of slavery to territories yet to be established, was rejected by the House on January 7th.

On January 14, the House of Representatives Committee of 33 declared that its vote would have resulted in a majority in favor of an amendment to end slavery where it already existed and to immediately admit the New Mexico Territory as a new slave state into the Union. This would de facto have extended the Missouri Compromise to all existing territories.

A fourth suggestion came from Virginia. Former President John Tyler , now a Virginia citizen who continued to play a major role in the fate of the nation, had been appointed Virginia's special envoy to President James Buchanan , urging him to maintain the status quo with regard to the secession states. Tyler was later elected to the Virginias special convention on leaving the Union. He believed that one last joint effort should be made to preserve the Union and, in a document published on January 17, called for a joint convention of the six free and six slave states in the border region. Virginia Governor John Letcher had previously made a similar appeal to the state legislature and has now agreed to host the convention. Corwin agreed to postpone a final vote in the House of Representatives on his plan until the convention was concluded.

The conference

The conference opened on February 4th at Willard's Hotel in Washington. All seven states of the Deep South had already decided to secede and had begun preparations for the formation of a new government in Montgomery , Alabama. At the same time that Tyler, who was to chair the conference, made his opening remarks to the delegates, his granddaughter was hoisting the flag in Montgomery for the conference there. Aside from the Deep South states, Arkansas , Michigan , Wisconsin , Minnesota , California and Oregon did not send any delegates to Washington. 14 free and seven slave states were represented. Among the delegates were James A. Seddon and William Cabell Rives from Virginia, David Wilmot from Pennsylvania, Reverdy Johnson from Maryland, William P. Fessenden and Lot M. Morrill from Maine , James Guthrie from Kentucky, Stephen T. Logan from Illinois , Alvan Cullom from Tennessee and Thomas Ewing and Salmon P. Chase from Ohio. Many of the delegates had real hopes of success, but many others from both sides of the spectrum had come simply as observers in the service of the interests they represented. Because many of the 131 delegates qualified as elder statesmen , including six ex-cabinet ministers, 19 ex-governors, 14 former senators, 50 former representatives, twelve judges on the Supreme Courts of states, and one former president, the meeting was often called the Old Gentleman's Convention ridiculed.

On February 6, a separate committee was formed to draft a draft decision. Each of the represented states was involved with one member, chaired by James Guthrie . The entire conference lasted three weeks and its final product was a proposal for a seven-point amendment that differed little from the Crittenden Compromise. The key issue of slavery in the Territories was addressed with a simple extension of the Missouri Compromise Line to the Pacific, without making a statement about newly established territories. This part of the proposal was passed with a vote of 9 to 8 states.

Other points in the proposed amendment concerned the need for approval for the acquisition of new territories by a majority of both slavery and free states; a ban on Congress passing laws affecting the status of slavery where it already existed; a ban on state legislatures passing laws that would prevent officials from apprehending and returning runaway slaves; a permanent ban on external slave trafficking; and 100 percent compensation for any slave owner whose slaves were freed by illegal mobs or intimidation of officials who enforced the Fugitive Slave Act . The main points of the amendment may only be further modified with the consent of all participating states.

consequences

The compromise negotiated to expand slavery failed to convince many of the anti-slavery Republicans. Nor was the issue of the protection of slavery in the territories, which had been an election issue for the Democrats in the North and South, addressed. The conference also closed just a few days before the end of the session of the Congress. The proposal did not find a majority in the Senate with 28 to 7 votes and was no longer voted on in the House of Representatives. The Corwin Amendment submitted by the Committee of 33 , which provided for a less comprehensive constitutional amendment, went through Congress, but on the question of slavery it only contained the protection of slavery where it already existed and thus posed the point of view of Lincoln and most of the politicians Both parties do not change the existing status quo of the constitution in this regard . A bill to incorporate the New Mexico Territory as a state was rejected by 115 votes to 71, with votes against by both Southern Democrats and Republicans.

With the postponement of Congress and Lincoln's inauguration as president, informal negotiations between southern unionists and representatives of the newly formed administration remained the only way to reach compromises; Congress was no longer a factor. A last convention of the slave states still in the Union, which was to take place in June 1861, did not take place because of the events at Fort Sumter . Robert H. Hatton , a unionist from Tennessee who would later switch sides, summed up the sentiments of many about the adjournment of Congress:

“We are getting along badly with our work of compromise - badly. We will break, I apprehend, without any thing being done. God will hold some men to a fearful responsibility. My heart is sick. "

literature

  • Edward P. Crapol: John Tyler: The Accidental President. 2006, ISBN 978-0-8078-3041-3 .
  • Daniel W. Crofts: Reluctant Confederates: Upper South Unionists in the Secession Crisis. 1989, ISBN 0-8078-1809-7 .
  • Maury Klein: Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War. 1997, ISBN 0-679-44747-4 .
  • Alan Nevins: The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War 1859–1861. 1950.
  • David M. Potter: The Impending Crisis 1848–1861. 1976, ISBN 0-06-131929-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nevins, pp. 397-402.
  2. ↑ Crofts, p. 201.
  3. ↑ Nevins, pp. 405-410.
  4. ↑ Crapol, pp. 259-261.
  5. ↑ Potter, pp. 545-546.
  6. ↑ Crofts p. 208.
  7. ↑ Potter, p. 546; Klein, p. 239.
  8. ↑ Potter, p. 547.
  9. ^ Avalon Project - Amendments Proposed by the Peace Conference, February 8-27, 1861 .
  10. ↑ Nevins, pp. 411-412.
  11. ↑ Crofts, p. 252.