Crittenden Compromise - Results

Results

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate rejected Crittenden's proposal. It was part of a series of last-ditch efforts to provide the Southern states with sufficient reassurances to forestall their secession during the final session of Congress prior to the Lincoln administration taking office.

The Crittenden proposals were also discussed in February 1861 at the peace conference, the final formal effort to avert the start of war, only to fail again as the provision guaranteeing slave-ownership throughout all Western territories and future acquisitions proved too unpalatable for Lincoln and the Republicans.

A second page editorial in the Charleston Courier (then Mississippi County, Missouri's newspaper of record) summed up the mood prevalent in Southern-leaning border counties as the Crittenden proposals fell: "Men at Washington think there is no chance for peace, and indeed we can see but little, everything looks gloomy. The Crittenden resolutions have been voted down again and again. Is there any other proposition which will win, that the South can accept? if not—there comes war—and woe to the wives and daughters of our land; beauty will be but an incentive to crime, and plunder but pay for John Brown raids. Let our citizens be prepared for the worst, it may come." This statement of the editor, George Whitcomb, followed a fiery front page letter from Congressman John William Noell excoriating "disunion."