Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/394

356 sectional majority, inflated by the recent triumph, was too powerful to be allayed by the appeals of patriotism or the counsels of wisdom. (Jefferson Davis.)

The communication of the Peace congress was received by the Senate on the 28th of February and referred to a committee, which immediately reported it back without change by a majority vote. Mr. Seward and Mr. Douglas joined in offering a substitute to invite the legislatures of the States to take the subject under consideration and express their will to Congress. Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, moved to substitute the report of the Peace Conference by the Crittenden Compromise. Mr. Crittenden appealed for a vote favorable to either his own plan or that of the Peace congress. &quot; I am for peace, I want to save the country and adjust our present difficulties. I shall vote for the amendments to the Constitution proposed by the convention, and there I shall stand. Mr. Mason declared that his State would deeply deplore that its mediation had not been effective. He believed that in the short time the convention had to deliberate they had done the best they could, but their action would place the Southern States in greater peril if the Constitution were amended as proposed. Mr. Trumbull, of Illinois, rebuked Mr. Crittenden for talking to the North about compromise when there was nothing to compromise about, and said that if he had appealed to the South, which was in rebellion and painted before them the hideousness of the crimes they were committing, calling on them to return to their allegiance and on the government to enforce its authority, we would have a very different state of things in the country. Mr. Pugh, of Ohio, entered the debate with a speech of great force, one statement of which caught particular attention. This was Sunday evening, toward the midnight of the session, when the hours were few until the new administration would be inaugurated. After referring to the fact that the Crittenden resolutions had been endorsed by