Louisville Daily Journal, December 27, 1860

Pursuant to the promise we made in our paper of Tuesday, we publish to-day the forcible and eloquent remarks of Senator Crittenden in explanation of his joint resolution, which we append to the remarks. We need not commend both to the attention of our readers.

The public has doubtless observed that the plan of Senator Crittenden, whilst it has met with greater favor in Congress than any other integral plan, is likely to fall short of the favor requisite under the Constitution for the proposing of amendments to that instrument. In fact, there would seem to be no reasonable likelihood whatever that two-thirds of both Houses of Congress will be brought to concur in proposing the amendments embraced in Mr. Crittenden's resolution; and, if not in proposing these amendments, then certainly not in proposing any others. This puts an end to the attempt of Congress to pacify the country. The attempt has proved a failure.

Nor is the cause of this effect at all obscure. Congress is composed for the most part of men who think more of office than they do of their country. In other words, Congress, generally speaking, is a body of mere politicians. It is of the nature of politicians to dare nothing for the public good. Hence, the present Congress has dared nothing and consequently done nothing for the peace and preservation of the Union. What remains?

We answer, EVERYTHING; for, though politicians are very potent in raising popular discontents, they are to be counted as nothing in the work of allaying the turmoil they have evoked. This work belongs pre-eminently to the PEOPLE, and they alone can perform it. But they have not yet even undertaken it. We believe the time has come for the people to take hold of the work.

How shall they do it? Our readers know that we have thus far steadily opposed the demand for new guarantees on the part of the slaveholding States at the present time, because we believed that the necessity for such guarantees was not sufficiently clear and imperative either to assure the harmony of the South in making the demand or to justify the undoubted hazards of its rejection by the North. In accordance with this belief, we have endeavored to rally the friends of the Union in the South under the banner of the Constitution as it is, without additional guarantees or expositions, leaving extraordinary measures of redress to the time, if it should ever come, when our constitutional rights should be actually assailed or abandoned by the Federal Government. We have called on the conservatives of the South to stand firmly by the Constitution without gloss or alteration, and, secure in the ample ability of the slaveholding States to protect themselves in any emergency, await calmly the development of Mr. Lincoln's policy. But we have called in vain. Our endeavor has been ineffectual. The unconciliatory bearing of the Republican leaders in Congress renders the further prosecution of the endeavor worse than ineffectual. We relinquish it.

But we do not relinquish our hope for the Union. Far from it. We but yield to the conviction that the present unhappy derangement of our political system is so deep-seated and so pervading that nothing less than a revision and amendment of the Constitution will correct the disorder. We yield to this conviction most reluctantly, and only after a close and patient and anxious survey of the whole question in all its momentous bearings. The course of events both at the North and at the South has forced the conviction upon us. We accept it reluctantly but without fear of the issue. Our faith in the preservation of the Union is unshaken. The American people, when fairly appealed to, are incapable of suffering the Union to perish. Let them be fairly appealed to without unnecessary delay.

There are but two constitutional modes by which this appeal can be made; namely, 1, The proposing of amendments to the Constitution by two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, and, 2, The calling of a Constitutional National Convention by Congress on the application of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States. The first mode, as we have seen, has been tried unavailingly. The second, in our judgment, is perfectly feasible, and preferable to the first on many other grounds, which we need not specify at present. There remains, to be sure, the revolutionary mode of calling a National Convention by Congress without the application of two-thirds of the States or of any other number of them, which, we believe, has been introduced into the Senate at Washington, but which obviously nothing save the direst national extremity could excuse. It appears to us that the present national extremity would hardly justify the adoption of this mode. The stain of inceptive unconstitutionality might fatally discredit the entire movement.

We think the true mode of initiating this great appeal to the American people is for the Legislatures of the various States approving it to apply immediately or as soon as possible to Congress to call a National Convention for proposing amendments to the Constitution. This mode is constitutional and at the same time practicable. Let Kentucky or Virginia or any other State lead off in the movement, and she will unquestionably be followed by the requisite number of her sister States. We at any rate are persuaded that the movement should be promptly initiated in some form or other. The failure of the Committees of Pacification in Congress to agree upon any plan of adjustment, taken in connection with the inflexible and defiant port of the Republican leaders, gives a totally different and far more threatening aspect to a crisis grave and formidable enough at best. It puts a new and sadder face on affairs. The people of the United States must come together and heal this breach, or the breach will swallow up the Union.

For ourselves, believing that the highest welfare of Kentucky and of every other State of the Confederacy is bound up indissolubly in the perpetuation of the Union on terms of equal justice to all, we shall never cease to labor with our whole strength for the perpetuation of the Union on this everduring basis; and, assuredly, if we know our own hearts, no pride of opinion, no political passion or prejudice, no fear of censure or of calumny, no hope of fortune or of applause, shall stand for an instant in the path of our labor. We are ready cheerfully to make any and every honorable sacrifice for the perpetuation of the Union. And so we confidently believe are the masses of the American people. Let them at all events have a fair chance to decide the solemn question for themselves.

We shall to-morrow recur to the subject of a National Convention.