Banks
suspended payment in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
The one important and all-engrossing thing in the mind's eye of
all the financial world at this moment was that specter of unpaid
Southern accounts.
At this juncture, Senator Crittenden of Kentucky submitted to the
Senate a plan which has been known ever since as the Crittenden
Compromise. It was similar to Weed's plan, but it also provided
that the division of the country on the Missouri Compromise line
should be established by a constitutional amendment, which would
thus forever solidify sectionalism. Those elements of the
population generally called the conservative and the responsible
were delighted. Edward Everett wrote to Crittenden, "I saw with
great satisfaction your patriotic movement, and I wish from the
bottom of my heart it might succeed"; and August Belmont in a
letter to Crittenden spoke for the moneyed interest: "I have yet
to meet the first Union-loving man, in or out of politics, who
does not approve your compromise proposition...."
The Senate submitted the Compromise to a Committee of Thirteen.
In this committee the Southern leaders, Toombs and Davis, were
both willing to accept the Compromise, if a majority of the
Republican members would agree.
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