'The Country Was Falling To Pieces'

17th of 45 excerpts from Lincoln by David Herbert Donald:

During the winter of 1860-1861 while Lincoln was constructing his cabinet, the country was falling to pieces. On December 3 the Congress reassembled to hear the plaintive message of retiring President Buchanan, who deplored secession but said nothing could be done to stop it. Three days later, South Carolinians elected an overwhelmingly secessionist state convention, which on December 20 declared that the state was no longer a part of the Union. By the end of January, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, George and Louisiana all followed, and secession was underway in Texas. In February representatives of six states of the Deep South met at Montgomery, Alabama, and drew up a constitution for the new Confederate States of America. As the Southern states seceded, they seized federal arsenals and forts within their borders. . . .

In Washington government officials could not agree on how to deal with the increasingly serious crisis. The President, along with many other conservatives, favored calling a national convention to amend the Constitution so as to redress Southern grievances. The House of Representatives created the Committee of Thirty-three, with one congressman from each state, to deal with the crisis. . . .

The chances for compromise in 1860-1861 were never great. The Crittenden Compromise, the most promising of the suggested amendments, was opposed by influential Southerners and Northerners alike. Only intervention by the president-elect might have changed the attitude of Republicans in Congress and, in doing so, could conceivably have induced the Southerners to reconsider their position. But Lincoln considered these compromise schemes bribes to the secessionists. Grimly, he told a visitor, "I will suffer death before I will consent or will advise my friend to consent to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege to take possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right."

Lincoln believed that the real object of the secessionists was to change the nature of the American government. In his view there were only two ways that could be done. One was through amending the Constitution, a right that everyone recognized. . . . The other way . . . was through revolution, of that "most sacred right" of a people "to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better."