"JOHN J. CRITTENDEN."
There is instruction also to be drawn from the speeches of Senators
Saulsbury, and Johnson of Tennessee, made fully a year afterward
(Jan. 29-31, 1862) in the Senate, touching the defeat of the
Crittenden Compromise by the Clark substitute at this time.
Speaking of the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, Mr.
Saulsbury said:
"At that session, while vainly striving with others for the
adoption of those measures, I remarked in my place in the Senate
that--
"'If any Gibbon should hereafter write the Decline and Fall of the
American Republic, he would date its fall from the rejection by the
Senate of the propositions submitted by the Senator from Kentucky.'
"I believed so then, and I believe so now. I never shall forget,
Mr. President, how my heart bounded for joy when I thought I saw a
ray of hope for their adoption in the fact that a Republican
Senator now on this floor came to me and requested that I should
inquire of Mr. Toombs, who was on the eve of his departure for
Georgia to take a seat in the Convention of that State which was to
determine the momentous question whether she should continue a
member of the Union or withdraw from it, whether, if the Crittenden
propositions were adopted, Georgia would remain in the Union.
"Said Mr.
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