While the Southern Democratic party and the Republican party thus drifted into defiant attitudes the other two parties to the late Presidential contest naturally fell into the role of peacemakers.  In this work they were somewhat embarrassed by their party record, for they had joined loudly in the current charge of “abolitionism” against the people of the North, and especially against the Republican party.  Nevertheless, they not only came forward to tender the olive branch, and to deprecate and rebuke the threats and extreme measures of the disunionists, but even went so far as to deny and disapprove the staple complaints of the conspirators.

  [Sidenote] “Globe,” Dec. 4, 1860, p. 5.

It must be remembered to the lasting honor of Senator Crittenden that at the very outset of the discussion he repudiated the absurd theory of noncoercion.  “I do not agree that there is no power in the President to preserve the Union; I will say that now.  If we have a Union at all, and if, as the President thinks, there is no right to secede on the part of any State (and I agree with him in that), I think there is a right to employ our power to preserve the Union.”

  [Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 11, 1860, pp. 51, 52.

Senator Pugh, of Ohio, saying that he lived on the border of the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States, contended that the fugitive-slave law was executed every day, or nearly every day.  It was in constant operation.  He would venture to say that the slave-States had not lost $100,000 worth of slave property since they had been in the Union, through negligence or refusal to execute it.

  [Sidenote] “Globe,” Dec. 11, 1860, p. 52.

Senator Douglas, of Illinois, said he supposed the fugitive-slave law was enforced with quite as much fidelity as that in regard to the African slave trade or the laws on many other subjects.  “It so happens that there is the greatest excitement upon this question just in proportion as you recede from the line between the free and the slave-States....  If you go North, up into Vermont where they scarcely ever see a slave and would not know how he looked, they are disturbed by the wrongs of the poor slave just in proportion as they are ignorant of the South.  When you get down South, into Georgia and Alabama, where they never lose any slaves, they are disturbed by the outrages and losses under the non-fulfillment of the fugitive-slave law just in proportion as they have no interest in it, and do not know what they are talking about.”

  [Sidenote] Ibid., Dec. 10, 1860, p. 24.