over, as Black and Stanton did, to the Anti-Southern group, they
still hoped that war would not be the result. Equally earnest against
war were most of the Republicans, though a few, to be sure, were ready
to swing the "Northern hammer." Summer prophesied that slavery would
"go down in blood." But the bulk of the Republicans were for a sectional
compromise, and among them there was general approbation of a scheme
which contemplated reviving the line of the Missouri Compromise, and
thus frankly admitting the existence of two distinct sections, and
guaranteeing to each the security of its own institutions. The greatest
Republican boss of that day, Thurlow Weed, came out in defense of this
plan.

No power was arrayed more zealously on the side of peace of any kind
than the power of money. It was estimated that two hundred millions of
dollars were owed by Southerners to Northerners. War, it was reasoned,
would cause the cancellation of these obligations. To save their
Southern accounts, the moneyed interests of the North joined the
extremists of Abolition in pleading to let the erring sisters go
in peace, if necessary, rather than provoke them to war and the
confiscation of debts. It was the dread of such an outcome--which
finally happened and ruined many Northern firms--that caused the
stock-market in New York to go up and down with feverish uncertainty.
Banks suspended payment in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
The one important and all-engrossing thing in the mind's eye of all
the financial world at this moment was that specter of unpaid Southern
accounts.

At this juncture, Senator Crittenden of Kentucky submitted to the Senate
a plan which has been known ever since as the Crittenden Compromise. It
was similar to Weed's plan, but it also provided that the division of
the country on the Missouri Compromise line should be established by
a constitutional amendment, which would thus forever solidify
sectionalism. Those elements of the population generally called the
conservative and the responsible were delighted. Edward Everett wrote to
Crittenden, "I saw with great satisfaction your patriotic movement, and
I wish from the bottom of my heart it might succeed"; and August Belmont
in a letter to Crittenden spoke for the moneyed interest: "I have yet
to meet the first Union-loving man, in or out of politics, who does not
approve your compromise proposition...."

The Senate submitted the Compromise to a Committee o