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to incalculable ills ;” and for this reason it earnestly invoked “abstinence from all counsels and measures of compulsion toward them.”
1
After voting thanks to the proprietors of the Hall, who made no charge for its use; to the municipal authorities of Washington City, who agreed to pay all of the expenses of the Convention incurred for printing and stationery; and to the president, “for the dignified and impartial manner” in which he had presided over their deliberations, the delegates listened to a brief farewell address from Mr. Tyler, and then adjourned.2 On the following day, one hundred guns were fired in Washington in honor of the “Convention Compromise.”
The President of the Convention immediately sent a copy of the proposed amendments to the Constitution, adopted by that body, to Vice-President Breckinridge, who laid the matter before the Senate.
It was referred to a Committee of Five, consisting of
Senators Crittenden,
Bigler,
Thomson,
Seward, and
Trumbull, with instructions to report the next day.
Mr. Crittenden reported the propositions of the
Convention, when
Mr. Seward, for himself and
Mr. Trumbull, presented as a substitute a joint resolution, that whereas the Legislatures of the States of
Kentucky,
New Jersey, and
Illinois had applied to Congress to call a convention of the States, for the purpose of proposing amendments to the
Constitution, the Legislatures of the other States should be invited to consider and express their will on the subject, in pursuance of the fifth Article of the
Constitution.
A long debate ensued; and, finally, on motion of
Senator Douglas, it was decided, by a vote of twenty-five to eleven, to postpone the consideration of the “
Guthrie plan” in favor of a proposition of amendment adopted by the House of Representatives, which provided that “no amendment shall be made to the
Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to interfere within any State with the domestic institutions thereof.”
In this the Senate concurred, when the
Crittenden Compromise, as we have observed,
3 was called up and rejected.
Thus ended the vain attempts to conciliate the Slave interest by Congressional
