in the West, defending the people of the frontier from the Indians; and the vessels of the navy required repairs. He complained again that Congress was delaying the Legislation which would enable him to make aggressive war against States whose hostile attitude, as he termed the procedure of secession conventions, and military preparations in the South, had assumed alarming proportions. He earnestly urged Congress to consider its responsibility, either to declare war or "to remove the grievances that might lead to war."
Mr. Jefferson Davis addressed the Senate on the general issue, proposing to Congress as the proper remedy "to assure the people of the South that you do not intend to use physical force against them, that you intend calmly to consider all the propositions which they make and to recognize the rights which the Union was established to secure; that you intend to settle with them upon a basis in accordance with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. When you do that peace will prevail over the land and force become a thing that no man will consider necessary. " No one among the conservative Northern states men listening at that moment doubted his sincerity in uttering these words of peace. That he preferred settlement on some basis like that proposed by Senator Crittenden to the secession of Mississippi, whose convention was at the same time debating secession, is beyond all doubt. His overtures in these general terms were in fact understood to mean that he would accept the Crittenden compromise, but to that pacific measure the majority in Congress was unalterably opposed. Had Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Seward, Mr. Fessenden, Mr. Collamer and Mr. Hale or other five only, of such statesmen responded to this spirit of Jefferson Davis, by declaring their readiness to put the Crittenden resolutions in force, it is reasonable to say that secession would have ceased that day, January 8th, the anniversary of Jackson s victory at
