He undoubtedly saw the chasm daily growing wider, and had he possessed that sagacious foresight, that profound knowledge of human nature, in which alone he was lacking as a statesman of the first order, he would have realized then, as Abraham Lincoln had before, that the die was cast and that the Union could not longer endure upon the compromises of the Constitution which had implanted slavery among a free, self-governing people, a majority of whom were opposed to it. But there is no recorded utterance of Jefferson Davis, no act of his, that would lead one to believe that he had despaired of some adjustment of matters, or that secession was wise or desirable, until after the nomination of Mr. Lincoln. Then, for the first time, he declared before a state convention at Jackson, Miss., that the Chicago platform would justify the South in dissolving the Union if the Republican party should triumph at the coming election. But he did not expect that triumph. Shortly previous to that speech, he had introduced resolutions in the Senate embodying the principles of the constitutional pro-slavery party.
They affirmed the sovereignty of the separate states, asserted that slavery formed an essential part of the political institutions of various members of the Union, that the union of the states rested upon equality of rights, that it was the duty of Congress to protect slave property in the territories, and that a territory when forming a constitution, and not before, must either sanction or abolish slavery. The resolution passed the Senate, and Mr. Davis hoped to see it become the platform of a reunited party, which would have meant the defeat of the Republican ticket and a consequent postponement of the war.
The foregoing facts alone make ridiculous the assertions of Mr. Pollard that during this Congress Jefferson Davis, with thirteen other senators, met one night in a room at the Capitol, and perfected a plan whereby the Southern states were forced into secession against the will of the people thereof.
What the plan was, how it was put into operation so as to circumvent the will of the people of eleven states who more than a year later decided the question of secession by popular vote, why Mr. Davis later introduced the above resolution and why he worked so zealously thereafter to prevent the threatened disruption and why he sought to induce the Charleston Convention to adopt his resolution as the principles of the party, Mr. Pollard does not attempt to explain. In fact, any rational explanation would be impossible, for at every point the evidence refutes the allegation.