Peace Conference of 1861 - Aftermath

Aftermath

In failing to limit the expansion of slavery to all new territories the compromise failed to satisfy hard line Republicans. In failing to protect slavery in the territories up to the point where a territory drafted a state constitution for the approval of Congress the compromise failed to address the issue that had divided the Democratic Party into northern and southern factions in the 1860 presidential elections. The convention’s work was completed with only a few days left in the final session of Congress. The proposal was rejected in the Senate in a 28 to 7 vote and never came to a vote in the House. A less all encompassing constitutional amendment finally submitted by the Committee of Thirty-Three was passed by Congress, but this amendment simply provided protection for slavery where it currently existed, something that Lincoln and most members of both parties already believed was a state right protected by the existing Constitution. A bill for New Mexico statehood was tabled by a vote of 115 to 71 with opposition coming from both Southerners and Republicans.

With the adjournment of Congress and the inauguration of Lincoln as president, the only avenue for compromise involved informal negotiations between Unionist southerners and representatives of the incoming Republican government; Congress was no longer a factor. A final convention of strictly the slave states still in the Union scheduled for June 1861 never occurred because of the events at Fort Sumter. Robert H. Hatton, a Unionist from Tennessee who would later change sides, summed up the feelings of many shortly before Congress adjourned:

We are getting along badly with our work of compromise – badly. We will break, I apprehend, without any thing being done. God will hold some men to a fearful responsibility. My heart is sick.