Crittenden-Johnson Resolution
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The Crittenden-Johnson Resolution (also called the Crittenden Resolution) was passed by the United States Congress on July 25, 1861 after the start of the American Civil War, which began on April 12, 1861.
It should not be confused with the "Crittenden Compromise", a series of unsuccessful proposals debated after slave states began seceding from the Union in an attempt to prevent the South from leaving the Union.
Why it was passed; historical context
During the war, President Abraham Lincoln was worried that the slave states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland in the crucial upper south might leave the Union to join the Confederate States of America. If Maryland was lost, Washington, D.C. would be entirely surrounded by Confederate territory. Both Missouri and Kentucky were slave states of questionable loyalty to the Union that bordered on important Union territory; Lincoln was born in Kentucky and losing his home state would be seen as a political failure.
Delaware (the other slave state that remained in the Union) had so few slaves that its fealty was never in question.
What the resolution was about
Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south's "peculiar institution" of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery. It was named for Senators John J. Crittenden of Kentucky and Andrew Johnson of Tennessee (who was later to become President).
The war was fought not for "overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States," but to "defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union." The war would end when the seceding states returned to the Union, slavery intact.
Final comments
The crucial states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri remained in the Union. After the bloody and questionable Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, Lincoln promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation, which was passed primarily as a diplomatic initiative to keep the United Kingdom from recognizing the Confederacy, and now it was about slavery.
However, in getting the seceding states to return to the Union, the resolution must be regarded a spectacular failure. The war dragged on four bloody years, and the seceding states returned — at the point of a gun, slavery abolished.
The Corwin Resolution (CONG. GLOBE, 36th Cong. 2d Sess. 1364 (1861)), however, which attempted to constitutionalize slavery, was adopted by the necessary two-thirds in both Houses and was actually submitted to the states for ratification. It was ratified by three states before the War pre-empted the debate.