Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[127] free city. The legislature of that State—the most powerful in the Republic—although in favor of an attempt at impossible conciliation, declared, on the 11th of January, its unalterable attachment to the Union. That of Pennsylvania having followed its example on the 24th, all danger of secession in the North finally disappeared. Delaware, who preserved in her constitution the principle of slavery, although slavery itself was virtually abolished in her territory, repelled the Southern emissaries; and the legislature of New Jersey, while recommending the adoption of Mr. Crittenden's compromise measure, declined to separate from her neighbors who were faithful to the Constitution.

The slave States known by the name of border States were the theatre of bitter contests between the two hostile parties. But their old attachment to the Constitution got also the better of their sympathies for their neighbors engaged in rebellion. Governor Hicks of Maryland resisted every attempt to drag that State into secession. The legislature of Kentucky and the electoral colleges of Tennessee and North Carolina refused to call a convention at the bidding of the seceders, and the voters of Virginia sent to the convention of that State a majority of delegates favorable to the Union. These demonstrations, however, only occasioned a little delay, obtained by the partisans of the Federal authority, which did not prove of essential service to their cause. In fact, those States simply offered their mediation, but their offers, although sincere for the most part, were only a disguised support to the pretensions of the slaveholders; their professions of fidelity to the Constitution lost all their value in consequence of the restrictions which surrounded them; for, while acknowledging that Mr. Lincoln's election was no valid cause for separation, and while submitting to his authority themselves, they denied the President's right to compel the rebel States to submit to it likewise. They proclaimed the doctrine of State sovereignty, and thus pursued a course which irresistibly led them to make common cause with the insurrection on the day when the war should break out.

Congress was the arena where the antagonistic passions which developed themselves on every side struggled for the mastery, and attempts at conciliation were only brought forward to be defeated