alterations were unfortunate--so much so that, when it was read in the
Senate, I was reluctantly constrained to criticise it. Compared,
however, with documents of the same class which have since been
addressed to the Congress of the United States, the reader of
Presidential messages must regret that it was not accepted by Mr.
Buchanan's successors as a model, and that his views of the Constitution
had not been adopted as a guide in the subsequent action of the Federal
Government.

The popular movement in the South was tending steadily and rapidly
toward the secession of those known as "planting States"; yet, when
Congress assembled on December 3, 1860 the representatives of the people
of all those States took their seats in the House, and they were all
represented in the Senate, except South Carolina, whose Senators had
tendered their resignation to the Governor immediately on the
announcement of the result of the Presidential election. Hopes were
still cherished that the Northern leaders would appreciate the impending
peril, would cease to treat the warnings, so often given, as idle
threats, would refrain from the bravado, so often and so unwisely
indulged, of ability "to whip the South" in thirty, sixty, or ninety
days, and would address themselves to the more manly purpose of devising
means to allay the indignation, and quiet the apprehensions, whether
well, founded or not, of their Southern brethren. But the debates of
that session manifest, on the contrary, the arrogance of a triumphant
party, and the determination to reap to the uttermost the full harvest
of a party victory.

Mr. Crittenden, of Kentucky, the oldest and one of the most honored
members of the Senate,[20] introduced into that body a joint resolution
proposing certain amendments to the Constitution--among them the
restoration and incorporation into the Constitution of the geographical
line of the Missouri Compromise, with other provisions, which it was
hoped might be accepted as the basis for an adjustment of the
difficulties rapidly hurrying the Union to disruption. But the earnest
appeals of that venerable statesman were unheeded by Senators of the
so-called Republican party. Action upon his proposition was postponed
from time to time, on one pretext or another, until the last day of the
session--when seven States had already withdrawn from the Union and
established a confederation of their own--and it was then defeated by a
majority of one vote.[