John J. Crittenden - Civil War

Civil War

Crittenden's son Thomas (above) fought for the Union, but another son George (below), fought for the Confederacy

From 1858 to 1860, Crittenden sought out moderates from all sections of the country to effect compromise on the territorial and slavery issues, thus averting war. In 1860, he was named chair of the National Union Executive Committee. a collection of congressmen and journalists who feared that sectional differences would destroy the Union. His efforts helped form the Constitutional Union Party later that year. Chosen as the keynote speaker at the party's national convention on May 9, 1860, many urged him to become their nominee for president. At age seventy-three, however, Crittenden was already contemplating retirement and instead orchestrated the nomination of John Bell, whom he actively supported in the 1860 presidential race.

Even after the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860, Crittenden rejected the idea that secession was inevitable and continued to work for the preservation of the Union. He believed that the current sectional crisis could—like all past disagreements in U.S. history—be resolved through compromise. However, he believed that this compromise must not be a simple legislative action, which could be altered or even repealed by a successive Congress, but amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which would be much more difficult to change. To that end, he proposed the Crittenden Compromise—a package of six constitutional amendments and four congressional resolutions—in December 1860. Among the resolutions were a condemnation of Northern personal liberty laws and an assertion of the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law. The amendments would have restored the Missouri Compromise line and extended it to California as a line of demarcation between slave and free territories. Crittenden's other amendments would have further guaranteed that slavery would remain legal indefinitely in Washington, D. C. so long as it was legal in either Maryland or Virginia and that slaveholders would be reimbursed for runaway slaves. Also, the amendments denied Congress any power to interfere with the interstate slave trade or with slavery in the existing Southern states and made the fugitive slave law and three-fifths compromise perpetual in duration.

The compromise proposal was referred to a special committee proposed by Crittenden's fellow Kentucky senator, Lazarus Powell. Though it was believed that Republicans in general, including their representatives on the committee, were disposed to accept Crittenden's compromise or one substantially similar to it, President-elect Lincoln had already instructed his trusted allies in the legislature to resist any plan to extend slavery into the territories. Consequently, when the committee held its first meeting, the Republican members blocked Crittenden's plan and six others from coming to the floor for a vote. Despite their opposition, however, the Republicans presented no alternative plan. After the rejection of Crittenden's plan in committee, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia followed South Carolina's lead and passed ordinances of secession.

On January 3, 1861, Crittenden tried to salvage his plan by recommending to the full Senate that it be submitted to the people in referendum. It was widely believed that a referendum would recommend adoption of Crittenden's plan, and Republicans in Congress used a variety of procedures to prevent a vote on allowing it. On January 16, with procedural delays exhausted, New Hampshire Senator Daniel Clark moved to substitute for Crittenden's plan a resolution stating that constitutional amendments were unnecessary to preserve the Union, and that enforcement of the Constitution and the present laws would eliminate the need for special sectional guarantees. With the senators from southern states (both those that had seceded and those that had not) refusing to vote, Republicans were left with a majority in the chamber and passed Clark's substitute resolution, effectively killing Crittenden's proposal.

Crittenden remained in Washington for a few weeks after Congress adjourned. Having learned that John Archibald Campbell, an Alabaman serving on the Supreme Court, had decided to resign in light of his state's secession, President Lincoln proposed to appoint Crittenden to the vacant seat. Lincoln's cabinet approved, and the nomination papers were drafted, but Campbell belatedly reconsidered his resignation, and by the time he definitely determined to resign, Lincoln had changed his mind regarding Crittenden's nomination.

Having failed to secure compromise at the federal level, Crittenden returned to Kentucky in early 1861, attempting to persuade his home state to reject the overtures of fellow southern states and remain in the Union. On May 10, 1861, a conference was held to decide Kentucky's course in the war. Crittenden joined Archibald Dixon and S. S. Nicholas as Unionist representatives at the conference; the Southern Rights position was represented by John C. Breckinridge, Governor Beriah Magoffin, and Richard Hawes. The conference failed to produced a united course of action, but adopted the policy of armed neutrality. Unionists in the legislature, however, feared that the state militia and its commander Simon Bolivar Buckner, had Confederate sympathies. To counter any threat that the militia would seize control of the state for the South, the General Assembly organized the Home Guard, a separate militia controlled by a five-man, pro-Union commission. Crittenden enlisted in the Home Guard as a private and was part of a group styled the "Union Defense Committee" that secured weapons for the Home Guard from the federal government.

In April, the General Assembly called a border states convention to be held in Frankfort in May. Slates of delegates were nominated by both the Unionists and Southern Rightists, but war broke out before the election of delegates; the Southern Rights delegates withdrew from the election, and the Unionist slate, including Crittenden, was chosen by default. On May 27, 1861, Crittenden was chosen chair of the convention and called it to order. With war having largely precluded any good the meeting could have accomplished, only nine of Kentucky's twelve delegates were present, along with four from Missouri (out of seven elected), and one from Tennessee (and his election was questionable); Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware sent no delegates. Ultimately, the convention accomplished little beyond calling on the southern states to reconsider their secession and on the northern states to moderate their demands.

Against his father's wishes, Crittenden's son George resigned his position as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army to enlist as a Confederate soldier. George's brother, Thomas Leonidas Crittenden, had been a member of Buckner's State Guard, but joined the Union Army in September 1861 and was advanced to the rank of brigadier general, serving under Don Carlos Buell. Another son, Eugene, also served in the Union Army and attained the rank of colonel. One of John Crittenden's grandsons, John Crittenden Coleman, enlisted with the Confederate Army, while another grandson, John Crittenden Watson, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and participated in David Farragut's capture of New Orleans, Louisiana during the war.