Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government

Subsequently, on the floor of the Senate, Douglas, who had been a member of the committee, called upon the opposite side to state what they were willing to do. He referred to the fact that they had rejected every proposition that promised pacification; stated that Toombs of Georgia and Davis of Mississippi, as members of the committee, had been willing to renew the Missouri Compromise, as a measure of conciliation, but had met no responsive willingness on the part of their associates of the opposition; he pressed the point that, as they had rejected every overture made by the friends of peace, it was now incumbent upon them to make a positive and affirmative declaration of their purpose.

Seward of New York, as we have seen, was a member of that committee—the man who, in 1858, had announced the “irrepressible conflict,” and who, in the same year, speaking of and for abolitionism, had said: “It has driven you back in California and in Kansas; it will invade your soil.” He was to be the Secretary of State in the incoming administration, and was very generally regarded as the “power behind the throne,” greater than the throne itself. He was present in the Senate, but made no response to Douglas's demand for a declaration of policy.

Meantime the efforts for an adjustment made in the House of Representatives had been equally fruitless. Conspicuous among these efforts had been the appointment of a committee of thirty-three members-one from each state of the Union—charged with a duty similar to that imposed upon the Committee of Thirteen in the Senate, but they had been alike unsuccessful in coming to any agreement. It is true that, a few days afterward, they submitted a majority and two minority reports, and that the report of the majority was ultimately adopted by the House; even if this action had been unanimous, and had been taken in due time, it would have been practically futile on account of its absolute failure to provide or suggest any solution of the territorial question, which was the vital point in controversy.

No wonder, then, that under the shadow of the failure of every effort in Congress to find any common ground on which the sections could be restored to amity, the close of the year should have been darkened by a cloud in the firmament, which had lost even the silver lining so long seen, or thought to be seen, by the hopeful.