17.  By William E. Niblack, of Indiana:  Payment by offending cities, counties, or districts for fugitive slaves rescued.

18.  By John A. McClernand, of Illinois:  Indemnity for fugitive slaves rescued.  A special Federal police to execute United States laws, and suppress unlawful resistance thereof.

19.  By Thomas C. Hindman, of Arkansas:  Right of property in slaves in slave-States.  No interdiction of inter-State slave trade.  Protection of slavery in all Territories.  Admission of States with or without slavery.  Right to hold slaves in transit through free-States.  Deprive States enacting personal liberty laws of representation in Congress.  Give slave-holding States an absolute negative upon all action of Congress relating to slavery.  States to appoint the officers exercising Federal functions within their limits.  Make these provisions, together with three-fifths representation, unrepealable.

20.  By Charles H. Larrabee, of Wisconsin:  A convention to amend Constitution.

21.  By Thomas L. Anderson, of Missouri:  Submit to the Supreme Court of the United States the questions at issue between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.  Carry into effect by law the opinion of said Court as a final settlement. (Submitted Dec. 13.)—­“Globe,” Dec. 12 and 13, 1860, pp. 76-79, and 96.

[3] “We want nothing more than a simple declaration that negro slaves are property, and we want the recognition of the obligation of the Federal Government to protect that property like all other.”  Senate Speech, “Globe,” May 17, 1860, p. 2155.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CONSPIRACY PROCLAIMED

To a great majority of the people the hopes and chances of a successful compromise seemed still cheering and propitious.  There was indeed a prevailing agitation in the Southern part of the Union, but it had taken a virulent form in less than half a dozen States.  In most of these a decided majority still deprecated disunion.  Three of the great political parties of the country were by the voice of their leaders pledged to peace and order; the fourth, apparently controlled as yet by the powerful influences of official subordination and patronage, must, so it seemed, yield to the now expressed and public advice of the President in favor of Union and the enforcement of the law; especially in view of the forbearance and kindness he was personally exercising towards the unruly elements of his faction.  Throughout the Northern States the folly and evils of disunion appeared so palpable that it was not generally regarded as an imminent danger, but rather as merely a possible though not probable event.  The hasty and seemingly earnest action of the people and authorities of South Carolina was looked upon as a historical repetition of the nullification crisis of 1831-32; and without examining too closely the real present condition of affairs, men hoped, rather than intelligently expected, that the parallel would continue to the end.  Some sort of compromise of the nature of that of 1850 was the prevailing preoccupation in politics.