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  1. Overview: The Road to Civil War
  2. Full Record: The Road to Civil War
  3. Committee:Senate Special Committee of Thirteen on the Condition of the Country
  4. Session: 1860-12-24 00:00:00
  5. Event type: CREATE

The Road to Civil War

Senate Special Committee of Thirteen on the Condition of the Country

A committee formed through a resolution submitted by Mr. Powell on December 6, 1860 and adopted on December 18, 1860. The role of the committee was to examine the conflict between slaveholding and non-slaveholding States and provide solutions and concessions to avoid secession.

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Session 14179: 1860-12-24 00:00:00

Mr. Seward formally enters the Committee and asks that his vote be recorded for previous sessions. Mr. Douglas and Mr. Seward submit Joint Resolutions to amend the Constitution and they are considered. The committee considers separate resolutions presented in the previous session by Mr. Toombs' and Mr. Davis.

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Joint Resolution Proposing Amendments to the Constitution: Douglas Compromise

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JOINT RESOLUTION proponing certain amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, (two thirds of both houses concurring,) That the following articles be, and are hereby, proposed and submitted as amendments to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as part of said Constitution, when ratified by conventions of three fourths of the several States:

Article 13.

Section 1. Congress shall make no law in respect to slavery or servitude in any Territory of the United States, and the status of each Territory in respect to servitude, as the same now exists by law, shall remain unchanged until the Territory, with such boundaries as Congress may prescribe, shall have a population of fifty thousand white inhabitants, when the white male citizens thereof over the age of twenty-one years may proceed to form a constitution and government for themselves and exercise all the rights of self government consistent with the Constitution of the United States; and when such new States shall contain the requisite population for a member of Congress, according to the then federal ratio of representation, it shall be admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States, with or without slavery, as the constitution of such new States shall provide at the time of admission; and in the meantime such new States shall be entitled to one delegate in the Senate, to be chosen by the legislature, and one delegate in the House of Representatives, to be chosen by the people having the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the legislature; and said delegates shall have all the rights and privileges of senators and representatives respectively, except that of voting.

Sec. 2. The United States shall have power to acquire, from time to time, districts of country in Africa and South America, for the colonization, at expense of the federal Treasury, of such free negroes and mulattoes as the several States may wish to have removed from their limits, and from the District of Columbia, and such other places as may be under the jurisdiction of Congress.

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