New-York Daily Tribune, January 7, 1861

To the Hon. JOHN J. CRITTENDEN, U. S. Senate:

DEAR SIR: The People of the Free States observe and appreciate your efforts to reconcile what are improperly termed "sectional" differences and maintain the integrity of the Union. They do not doubt your sincerity nor your patriotism. They realize that, even when you most wronged yourself in upholding the policy embodied in the Nebraska bill and the consequent dragooning of the free settlers of Kansas with intent to bend their necks to the yoke of Slavery, you yielded to a local ignorance and prejudice which you could not control, and which, because you would not minister unreservedly to its wild exactions, has consigned you to private life after the 4th of March next. They make due allowance for the ferocity of the Pro-Slavery fanaticism which has thus ostracised you, and leniently judge that, though a bolder man might have done better, an average man would have done worse; and they are not ungrateful for your honest and earnest efforts to save the Union from disruption and the country from the horrors of civil war. They feel sure that, were the People of the Slave States in the average as enlightened and as just as you are, the dangers now impending might be dispelled or averted. Nevertheless, they do not and will not assent to the Compromise proposed by you-that is a fixed fact. Here and there one who never shared their convictions, but only affected them in order to get himself elected to some high office, or who owns real estate in Washington City and feels that it is likely to be ruined by Disunion, or who has a great Railroad contract in Missouri or some other Slave State, and may be broken by the depreciation of that State's bonds, or who is a lame duck in the Stock Market and hopes to win back all he has lost and more with it if a Compromise can be fixed up, may accede to your project or to something equivalent; but ninety-nine of every hundred Republicans are opposed to any such bargain, and will not be concluded by it if made. Moreover, thousands of Democrats and of Conservatives who stood with you on the platform of "The Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the Laws," are also opposed to any such arrangement while the Federal authority is defied and the Union threatened with subversion. Let me briefly set forth the reasons which unite the North in resistance to any Compromise at present:

I. One State to-day is in open rebellion against the Federal authority; others are preparing to follow her immediately. Federal arsenals and forts, containing great numbers of cannon, many thousand stand of arms, and great quantities of military stores, have been seized and are now held by the insurgents, not in South Carolina only, but in Georgia, Alabama, and I believe other Slave States which have not yet declared themselves out of the Union. The slender Federal garrison of the forts in Charleston harbor is this hour in peril of destruction by an overwhelming rebel force, and not only its commander, but the President of the United States is railed at and defamed because that commander has concentrated his three or four score soldiers in that fortress where they can hold out longest and sell their lives most dearly. The Federal Custom-House at Charleston has been turned over to the state and the late U.S. Collector assumes to clear vessels on the authority of the nation of South Carolina. That pseudo nation assumes to be out of the Union, withdraws her Members from Congress, and sends Embassadors to Washington as to a foreign capital. In view of these high-handed proceedings, and the scarcely dissembled menaces that all the Federal forts in the South will soon be seized by the Disunionists, and the inauguration of Lincoln at Washington on the 4th of March next prevented by an insurgent force, the People of the Free States very naturally repel any Compromise that will enable these rebels to boast that they have frightened or backed down the North. We are not frightened hereabouts; we do not feel a bit sorry for what we have done; and we do not capitulate to traitors. If, then, what you propose were inherently admissible, we could not assent to it now.

II. I need not tell you that what you propose (the line of 36° 30', with free course to Slavery below it) has been thrice offered to and thrice rejected by the Free States. We deem it unfair on many grounds, but conspicuously because, when Louisiana, Florida, and Texas were successively acquired, the fact that they were previously slaveholding was relied on to bar any demand that they should henceforth be even half Free; and we insist that the rule which gave them to Slavery now consecrates New-Mexico and Arizona to Freedom. You would not expect Republicans to vote for your project if there were no threats and no danger of Disunion or violent resistance to Mr. Lincoln's rule; and you must not hope to extort from our fears what you could not expect us to concede from a sense of justice. You do not mean to degrade us; but your proposition, if accepted, would have that effect; and you must allow us to judge what is due to our own honor.

III. Your friends in the Slave States do not talk right. Take the following samples from the resolves of a Union meeting held on the 1st inst., in your own city of Frankfort, Ky., and addressed by your friend, Gen. Combs:

"8th. That the resolutions of compromise submitted by Mr. Crittenden in the U. S. Senate, should have met with prompt acceptance by the people of all the States, and by their constituted representatives, and while we ask for nothing more, we will submit to nothing less.

"9th. That we condemn all hasty and precipitate action by individuals or States; but, being under like condemnation, we cordially sympathize with the people of the other Slave States, and if all other redress shall fail, we will cordially and promptly appeal with them to the God of Battles, in defense of our common rights, and in redress for our common wrongs."