%421.  Why did the States secede?%—­Why did the Southern slave states secede?  To be fair to them we must seek the answer in the speeches of their leaders.  “Your votes,” said Jefferson Davis, “refuse to recognize our domestic institutions [slavery], which preexisted the formation of the Union, our property [slaves], which was guaranteed by the Constitution.  You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union.  You elect a candidate upon the basis of sectional hostility; one who in his speeches, now thrown broadcast over the country, made a distinct declaration of war upon our institutions.”

“There is,” said Howell Cobb, of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, “no other remedy for the existing state of things except immediate secession.”

“Our position,” said the Mississippi secession convention, “is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.  A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.  There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union.”

Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, asserted that the Personal Liberty laws of some of the free states “constitute the only cause, in my opinion, which can justify secession.”

The South seceded, then, according to its own statements, because the people believed that the election of Lincoln meant the abolition of slavery.

%422.  Compromise attempted%.—­The Republican party in 1861 had no intention of abolishing slavery.  Its purpose was to stop the spread of slavery into the territories, to stop the admission of more slave states, but not to abolish slavery in states where it already existed.  A strong wish therefore existed in the North to compromise the sectional differences.  Many plans for a compromise were offered, but only one, that of Crittenden, of Kentucky, need be mentioned.  He proposed that the Constitution should be so amended as to provide

1.  That all territory of the United States north of 36 deg. 30’ should be free, and all south of it slave soil.

2.  That slaves should be protected as property by all the departments of the territorial government.

3.  That states should be admitted with or without slavery as their constitutions provided, whether the states were north or south of 36 deg. 30’.

4.  That Congress should have no power to shut slavery out of the territories.

5.  That the United States should pay owners for rescued fugitive slaves.

As these propositions recognized the right of property in slaves, that is, put the black man on a level with horses and cattle, the Republicans rejected them, and the attempt to compromise ended in failure.

%423.  A Proposed Thirteenth Amendment%.—­One act of great significance was done.  A proposition to add a thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states.  It read,