The Peace Conference of 1861 was a meeting of more than 100 of the leading politicians of the antebellum United States held in Washington, D.C., in February 1861 that was meant to prevent what ultimately became the Civil War. The success of President Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party in the national elections of 1860 led to a flurry of political activity. In much of the South, elections were held to select delegates to special conventions empowered to consider secession from the Union. In Congress, efforts were made in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to reach compromise over the issues relating to slavery that were dividing the nation. The Washington Peace Conference of 1861 was the final effort by the individual states to resolve the crisis. With the seven states of the Cotton South already committed to secession, the emphasis for peacefully preserving the Union focused on the eight slaveholding states representing the Upper and Border South, with the states of Virginia and Kentucky playing key roles.
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Famous quotes containing the words peace and/or conference:
“Peace can endure only so long as humanity really insists upon it, and is willing to work for it and sacrifice for it. Twenty- five years ago American fighting men looked to the statesmen of the world to finish the work of peace for which they fought and suffered; we failed them, we failed them then, we cannot fail them again and expect the world to survive again.”
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