crittendencompromise

Choosing War:

The Defeat of a Reasonable Compromise Plan that Could Have Preserved the Union without Bloodshed

Michael T. Griffith

2026

Abraham Lincoln's victory in the 1860 election triggered the seven Deep South states to secede, i.e., to vote to separate from the Union and to form their own government, the Confederate States of America. The Deep South states were South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. South Carolina was the first Deep South state to leave the Union. The state voted for secession on December 20, 1860.

Early in the secession crisis, a reasonable compromise plan was proposed that stood an excellent chance of ending secession and preserving the Union without war. However, Republican leaders blocked the measure in the U.S. Senate and House and would not allow a national vote on it.

It is often overlooked that the main dispute over slavery between Northern and Southern leaders involved the extension of slavery into the territories, not the continuation of slavery where it already existed. Most Republicans were not opposed to the continuation of slavery in those states where it was already established. Indeed, the majority of the men in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet had no interest in disturbing slavery where it already existed, and Lincoln himself not only shared this view but supported a proposed constitutional amendment that would have made it permanently impossible for the federal government to abolish slavery in any of the existing slave states. The key dispute was over the extension of slavery into the territories.

If the Republicans had been willing to compromise to a relatively small degree on the extension of slavery, the Deep South states may very well have rejoined the Union soon after they seceded; in fact, they may not have seceded at all if the Republicans had not insisted on banning slavery in all the territories.

The Crittenden Compromise

Soon after South Carolina left the Union, Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky offered a popular compromise plan, known as the Crittenden Compromise, that offered concessions to both sides. Critics of the proposal note that it would have permanently enshrined slavery in the U.S. Constitution, but, as noted earlier, Lincoln and many other Republicans supported a proposed amendment, the Corwin Amendment, that would have done the same thing. Again, most Republicans had no interest in abolishing slavery where it already existed. Furthermore, under the compromise plan, states still would have retained the absolute right to abolish slavery within their boundaries.

The Crittenden Compromise would have restored the Missouri Compromise line of the 36-30 parallel and extended the line to the West Coast, allowing slavery only in areas south of the line. The only territories south of the line were parts of New Mexico Territory and Indian Territory, most of which were unsuitable for slave labor. This would have meant a substantial reduction in the percentage of the territories open to slavery under the Missouri Compromise and would have had the effect of continuing slavery's demise.

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The Crittenden proposal would have also set up a type of compensated emancipation arrangement by requiring Congress to compensate owners of rescued fugitive slaves (i.e., owners of slaves who succeeded in escaping to free states). In addition, the plan would have amended the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to make it more acceptable to Republicans by equalizing the fee schedule for returning or releasing alleged fugitive slaves and by limiting the powers of marshals to summon citizens to aid in their capture.

Republicans had justifiably complained that fugitive slave court commissioners received a higher fee for returning runaway slaves to slavery than for releasing them. Republicans had also objected to the Fugivite Slave Act's provision that gave federal marshals vast authority to compel citizens to aid in the capture of runaway slaves. Crittenden's proposal addressed these two valid concerns.

Significantly, key Southern leaders, including Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs, said they would accept the Crittenden Compromise. Their support indicated the plan had a real chance of ending secession and maintaining the Union without war. But, the Republicans in the Senate and the House rejected the proposal.

Then, when Senator Crittenden and others tried to allow the people themselves to vote directly on the plan in a national referendum, the Republicans blocked any further action on the proposal, even though they were aware that a majority of the people probably supported it. Northern abolitionist Horace Greeley later declared that in a popular referendum the compromise plan would have won by “an overwhelming majority” (Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, pp. 401-402). Historian Allan Nevins discussed the plan’s popularity:

That Crittenden's scheme had wide and enthusiastic public support there could be no question. John A. Dix, Edward Everett, and Robert Winthrop no sooner saw it than they wrote approbatory [approving] letters. Martin Van Buren declared that the amendments [proposed in Crittenden's plan] would certainly be ratified by three-fourths of the States. The Senator received hundreds of assurances from all over the North and the border States that his policy had reached the popular heart. It took time to hold meetings and get memorials signed, but before long resolutions and petitions were pouring in upon Congress. In New York City, sixty-three thousand people signed an endorsement of the plan; another document bore the names of fourteen thousand women, scattered from North Carolina to Vermont. From St. Louis came nearly a hundred foolscap pages of names, wrapped in the American flag. Greeley [an influential New York newspaper editor and owner], who had as good opportunities for knowing public sentiment as any man in the country, later wrote that supporters of the Crittenden Compromise could claim with good reason that a large majority of people favored it. . . .

Early in January, Crittenden rose in the Senate to make the remarkable proposal that his compromise should be submitted to the people of the entire nation for their solemn judgment, as expressed by a popular vote. . . . The proposal inspired widespread enthusiasm. . . . Because of Republican obstruction, interposing delay after delay, it never came to a vote in the Senate. . . . (The Emergence of Lincoln, pp. 392-393, 401-402)

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Senator Crittenden himself noted the popularity of his proposal in the North. Historian William Cooper:

Moreover, he [Senator Crittenden] insisted that a large portion, “if not a majority,” of the northern electorate rejected Republican obduracy. Crittenden based this estimate on petitions and memorials flooding Congress. He specified that no less than a quarter million northern voters had signed petitions submitted to Congress. He also noted that legislatures had “memorialized, and, in fact, petitioned Congress in the name of the people of their States.” Even executives of railroad lines traversing the North testified to widespread backing for compromise and expressed their wishes for settlement along the lines of his proposals, Crittenden added. (We Have the War Upon Us: The Onset of the Civil War, November 1860-April 1861, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Kindle Edition, pp. 7-8)

Senator John J. Crittenden. Crittenden opposed secession and remained loyal to the Union after the Civil War started.

When the Republicans blocked the Crittenden Compromise in the Senate, only four of the Deep South states had seceded. Passage of the proposal at that point would have stood a very good chance of halting secession and causing the four seceded states to rejoin the Union.

The whole issue of slavery in the western territories was a phony issue anyway. Many Northern and Southern leaders alike were guilty of making a mountain out of a molehill on the issue. Southern slaveholders had displayed virtually no interest in moving to the territories. As of December 1860, there were very few slaves in the territories, fewer than 50, and many of them were there only because they were the slaves of federal employees who were stationed in the territories. Also, everyone knew there was no chance that any territory would vote to legalize slavery once it became a state in the Union. The issue of slavery expansion into the territories was a phantom issue that elements on both sides dishonestly exploited.

As mentioned, the Crittenden Compromise would have imposed a substantial reduction in the percentage of the territories open to slavery under the Missouri Compromise, and much of the land in the part of the territories that would have been open to slavery under the compromise was unsuitable for slave labor.

Textbook Distortion vs. Fact

The standard textbook narrative is that the Deep South senators opposed the Crittenden Compromise and instead advocated for the secession of the Southern states. This is an incomplete and misleading portrayal of what happened. When the proposal was voted on by the Senate committee formed to consider it, Jefferson Davis and the other Southern senators on the committee did in fact vote against it, even though they supported it. They did so because they noted that Republican opposition to the proposal made it pointless for them to vote for it. They explained that if the Republicans on the committee had voted for it, the Southerners on the committee would have also voted for it. Historian David Potter explains that it was the Republicans, not Southern members of Congress, who blocked the Crittenden Compromise:

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What do we mean, specifically, by saying that the Republican party rejected compromise? Certain facts are reasonably familiar in this connection, and may be briefly recalled. In December, 1860, at the time when a number of secession conventions had been called in the Southern states but before any ordinances of secession had been adopted, various political leaders brought forward proposals to give assurances to the Southerners. The most prominent of these was the plan by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky to place an amendment in the Constitution which would restore and extend the former Missouri Compromise line of 36-30, prohibiting slavery in Federal territory north of the line and sanctioning it south of the line. In a Senate committee, this proposal was defeated with five Republicans voting against it and none in favor of it, while the non-Republicans favored it six to two.

On January 16, after four states had adopted ordinances of secession, an effort was made to get the Crittenden measure out of committee and on to the floor of the Senate. This effort was defeated by 25 votes against to 23 in favor. This was done on a strict party vote, all 25 of the votes to defeat being cast by Republicans. None of those in favor were Republicans. On March 2, after the secession of the lower South was complete, the Crittenden proposal was permitted to come to a vote [by the full Senate]. In the Senate, it was defeated 19 to 20. All 20 of the negative votes were Republican, not one of the affirmative votes was so. In the House, it was defeated 80 to 113. Not one of the 80 was a Republican, but 110 of the 113 were Republicans. (David Potter, "Why the Republicans Rejected Both Compromise and Secession," in Edwin C. Rozwenc, The Causes of the American Civil War, Second Edition, Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1972, p. 309)

Were Republicans Justified in Rejecting the Crittenden Compromise?

Civil War scholar Farrell Evans agrees that it was the Republicans who blocked the Crittenden Compromise and that they did so because they were unwilling to compromise on slavery in the territories:

To evaluate the Crittenden Compromise and other plans to reach a compromise agreement, the Committee of Thirteen met for the first time on December 18, 1860. This group, which was composed of seven Democrats, five Republicans and one Constitutional Unionist, passed a motion by Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis that a proposal could not be adopted unless it was supported by a majority of Republicans and Democrats. According to Richard Striner, the author of Summoned to Glory: The Audacious Life of Abraham Lincoln and three other books on Lincoln, the 16th president’s influence with key Republicans was instrumental in the failure of Crittenden’s proposal.

“Thanks in large part to Lincoln’s goading, all five Republicans on the committee opposed it,” Striner wrote in the New York Times in 2010. “In turn two southern members on the committee, Robert Toombs and Jefferson Davis, voted against it on the grounds that such unified Republican opposition made the compromise worthless.”

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On January 16, 1861, the Crittenden Compromise was voted down in the Senate with all 25 Republicans voting no to 23 yes votes. A month after the Crittenden Compromise failed in the Senate, a slightly modified version of the plan was debated at the Peace Conference, where delegates from 21 of the 34 states met in Washington, but it also didn’t gain the support of Republicans because it didn’t limit the expansion of slavery in the territories.

“The entire existence of the Republican Party was predicated on a commitment to containing slavery within its present bounds,” Goodheart wrote in 1861. “Were its leaders to abrogate this fundamental principle, at the very hour of their electoral triumph? ("The 1860 Compromise That Would Have Preserved Slavery in the US Constitution," https://www.history.com/articles/crittenden-compromise-slavery-civil-war)

Accepting the Crittenden proposal would hardly have abrogated the Republican principle of containing slavery within its existing boundaries. The proposal would have banned slavery in about 66 percent of the western territories and would have limited slavery to areas that were largely unsuitable for slave labor. This would have given the Republicans most of what they said they wanted on the issue. Cooper:

Republicans repeatedly maintained that they would bar southerners from the territories, taking all for the North. For Crittenden solving this problem was simple—a compromise, extending the Missouri line westward to California. This was more than an equitable division, he informed Republicans, for it gave the North fully two-thirds of the national domain. Furthermore, because of the inhospitable climate and terrain below that line, he foresaw little chance of slavery taking hold there. As a result, he defined Republican insistence on the total prohibition of slavery as “a mere question of abstract right.”

Crittenden said he would never waver in his great goal to halt any future secession and then aim for reconstruction of the Union. From Republicans he solicited compromise, “giv[ing] to the nation breathing-time” to get past the alarm pervading the country. But he admitted despite that single request “this is refused.” He pointed out to Republicans that they would control the executive branch, that the northern population and economy were outpacing the southern. Over time, northern power would only increase. Thus, offering the South now what he termed “a little boon” in order to save the country he saw as wise policy, not craven compromise. . . .

Identifying himself as a southern man, though one utterly attached to the Union, he urged southerners to recognize the moment as “a time of high party excitement by one Congress.” This emotional spasm would pass, he asserted. New elections would result in more balanced views in Congress. To buttress his case he emphasized the same petitions and memorials he used to appeal to Republicans. (We Have the War Upon Us, pp. 7-8)

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Evans approvingly quotes Goodheart's argument that the Republicans were justified in ignoring the widespread support for the Crittenden Compromise because nearly 2 million Northerners had voted for Lincoln:

"The cartloads of petitions in support of compromise must be weighed against the grassroots fervor of the recent campaign: nearly two million Americans in the North had voted for Lincoln, despite all the Southern warnings that his victory would mean disunion.” ("The 1860 Compromise That Would Have Preserved Slavery in the US Constitution," https://www.history.com/articles/crittenden-compromise-slavery-civil-war)

This is a misguided, flawed argument. In the 1860 election, Lincoln received only 39.9 percent of the popular vote. The three candidates who favored compromise on slavery in the territories received 60.1 percent of the vote. Although Lincoln lost the popular vote by a wide margin, he won the Electoral College vote by winning 18 out of the 33 states, but his margin of victory in several states was razor thin: he won California by less than 1 percentage point and won Oregon by less than 2 percentage points. He won his home state of Illinois by less than 4 percentage points. He received only 10.2 percent of the vote in Missouri and only 23.7 percent of the vote in Delaware. The three pro-compromise candidates received over 900,000 votes in the Northern states, which was half of all the votes cast in those states. So the Republicans could hardly claim they had any kind of a mandate to reject a reasonable compromise on slavery in the territories.

Lincoln was a good man and a noble leader, but he showed overly partisan, inflexible reasoning in opposing the Crittenden Compromise. Lincoln harbored no hostile intentions toward the South. He proved this in his two inaugural addresses and in his lenient, merciful terms for readmitting the seceded states into the Union. Before the war began, he sincerely believed that any war between the North and the South would be brief, that it would end in a matter of months, and that it would result in the restoration of the Union as it was before the election. Perhaps this was why he adamantly opposed any reasonable compromise on slavery in the territories. He should have realized that a war can escalate and last much longer than expected. He should have comprehended that accepting a sensible, fair compromise was a safer and wiser move than risking war and gambling that the war would be brief.

Congressman David Wilmot

Republican Motives and the Western Territories

It is important to understand that most Republicans wanted to ban slavery from the territories primarily because they wanted to reserve the territories for white workers. When they were Whigs or Free Soilers in 1846-1849, most Republican politicians, including Lincoln, supported the Wilmot Proviso, which at one point would have banned free blacks from moving into the territories, in addition to banning slavery there (Divine et al, editors, America Past and Present, p. 413). The proviso was authored by Congressman David Wilmot from Pennsylvania. Wilmot was instrumental in establishing the Republican Party in Pennsylvania.

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Also, in the 1860 election campaign many Republican candidates championed their party as the true “White Man’s Party” that would reserve the territories for white labor. Congressman Wilmot himself proudly called his proposal the “White Man’s Proviso” (Holt, The Fate of Their Country, p. 27). Said Wilmot,

I plead the cause and the rights of white freemen. I would preserve to free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance, where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wilmot_(politician))

Wilmot added that his proviso would ensure slavery's demise:

Keep it [slavery] within given limits ...and in time it will wear itself out. Its existence can only be perpetuated by constant expansion. ... Slavery has within itself the seeds of its own destruction. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wilmot_(politician))

Lincoln shared Wilmot's view, and his position reflected the thinking of most Republicans at the time:

Now irrespective of the moral aspect of this question as to whether there is a right or wrong in enslaving a negro, I am still in favor of our new Territories being in such a condition that white men may find a home—may find some spot where they can better their condition—where they can settle upon new soil and better their condition in life. I am in favor of this not merely (I must say it here as I have elsewhere) for our own people who are born amongst us, but as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over. . . . (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, p. 807)

"Bleeding Kansas"

Events in Kansas in 1855 and 1856 are often cited as evidence of a Southern attempt to violently impose slavery on a territory against its will. Proslavery and antislavery factions resorted to using violence in their efforts to control the territory’s destiny. Both sides were guilty of excesses and crimes. Northern newspapers printed wildly misleading accounts of the situation, accusing proslavery forces of widespread, unrestrained violence in the territory. The amount of violence in the territory was overstated. Much of the violence, if not most of it, was not related to the slavery issue. “Bleeding Kansas” became a rallying cry for abolitionists and sparked fistfights in Congress. Historian Forrest McDonald comments on the events in Kansas as follows:

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Actually, the violence in “Bleeding Kansas” was not appreciably more severe than was common in newly opened frontier communities, and a lot of it involved land claims and other disputes having no bearing upon slavery. But newspapers in the Northeast carried sensational stories almost daily and portrayed the actions as representing unmitigated proslavery aggression. (States’ Rights and the Union, University Press of Kansas, 2000, p. 171)

Historian Thomas Woods:

It was fairly clear that slavery would not take root in Nebraska, but the outcome in Kansas was not so certain. Supporters and opponents of slavery flocked to Kansas to influence the vote. The typical textbook describes Kansas as the scene of ceaseless slavery-related violence. Recent scholarship, however, casts doubt on this perception. Eyewitness accounts and newspaper reports appear to have been unreliable, even wildly exaggerated. In their own propaganda, both sides tended to inflate the number of killings to call attention to their own plight or to impress readers with the number of casualties they managed to inflict on their opponents. “Political killings,” writes research Dale Watts, “account for about one-third of the total violent deaths. They were not common. The streets and byways did not run red with blood as some writers have imagined.”

A recent study concluded that of the 157 violent deaths that occurred during Kansas’s territorial period, fifty-six appear to have had some connection to the political situation or to the slavery issue. (The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2004, pp. 49-50)

Gradual Extinction vs. the Bloodiest War in U.S. History

By 1860, slavery was already moving slowly but surely toward extinction. The Crittenden Compromise would have done nothing to slow slavery's demise. If anything, it would have accelerated slavery's collapse. It would have ensured that slavery could only extend into 33 percent of the western territories, and into areas that were mostly unsuitable for slave labor, not to mention the fact that very few slaveholders had relocated into the territories anyway. Everyone knew there was no chance that any territory that became a state would vote to enter the Union as a slave state.

If the Republicans had accepted the Crittenden plan, the country would have avoided the bloodiest war in its history. Over 600,000 Northern and Southern troops would have been spared death, and tens of thousands of other soldiers would have been spared permanent injury.

It would not have been the end of the world if Southern slavery had died a natural death or had been abolished gradually, just as was done in the Northern states. Other nations found ways to abolish slavery peacefully, and most did not abolish slavery until after the U.S abolished it. Brazil did not abolish slavery until 1888. Although England ended slavery in 1833, the British government did not end the slave trade until 1873. Bulgaria did not abolish slavery until 1879. Spanish Cuba did not abolish slavery until 1886. None of those nations found it necessary to fight a long, bloody war to end slavery.

Accepting the Crittenden Compromise would have been a better choice than plunging the nation into the Civil War.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Michael T. Griffith, a 21-year U.S. Army veteran, holds a Master of Arts degree in Theology from The Catholic Distance University, a Graduate Certificate in Ancient and Classical History from American Military University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Liberal Arts from Excelsior College, and two Associate in Applied Science degrees from the Community College of the Air Force. He also holds an Advanced Certificate of Civil War Studies and a Certificate of Civil War Studies from Carroll College. He is a graduate in Arabic and Hebrew of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and of the U.S. Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. In addition, he has completed Advanced Hebrew programs at Haifa University in Israel and at the Spiro Institute in London, England. He is the author of five books on Mormonism and ancient texts, including How Firm A Foundation, A Ready Reply, and One Lord, One Faith. He is also the author of two books on the JFK assassination titled Compelling Evidence (1996) and A Comforting Lie: The Myth that a Lone Gunman Killed President Kennedy (2023), of a book on the Pearl Harbor attack titled The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor (2021), and of a book on the Vietnam War titled Reclaiming the Vietnam War: The Betrayal of South Vietnam (2025).

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