To show the incredible lengths to which the overwhelming majority of Northerners were willing to go to avoid the breakup of the Union in the Secession Winter, it is revealing to examine the most serious compromise proposal under consideration in the Senate in December: the Crittenden Compromise, so called after its sponsor, Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky. This document would have guaranteed for all eternity a hands-off policy toward slavery by the federal government. It contained a series of six unalterable constitutional amendments—amendments “no future amendment of the Constitution shall affect”—the most important of which recognized slavery of the African race “in all territory now held or hereafter acquired” south of the Missouri Compromise line. It also added that no future amendment should ever alter the three-fifths rule (for counting slaves for representation), nor abridge the right to recover fugitive slaves, nor give Congress power to encroach on slavery in the states where it already existed.

It is hard to imagine a proposal more at odds with the Chicago platform that Lincoln was dedicated to uphold. Yet converts to the new plan were streaming out of the Republican fold. Railway president John Brodhead of Philadelphia claimed that half of the Pennsylvanians who had voted for Lincoln now supported Crittenden; he was sure that “three fourths of the people of Pennsylvania and New Jersey warmly approve” the plan. Jay Gould, too, estimated “not less than a hundred thousand majority” in favor of compromise in Pennsylvania. New York insurance magnate James DePeyster Ogden wrote to Crittenden that conservatives were leaving the Republican Party, and that even moderates were pressing for compromise. Horatio Seymour predicted a New York majority of 150,000 in favor of the amendments—in New York City alone, 63,000 signed a petition endorsing the plan. In Massachusetts, a greater number signed petitions for Crittenden in December than had voted for Lincoln the month before. Crittenden himself was encouraged, he said, by “commendation … from high Republican sources.” Others, such as John A. Dix of New York, looked ahead “with strong confidence that we could carry three-fourths of the States” needed to ratify the amendments. Governor Hicks of Maryland wrote to Crittenden on December 13 that millions were loyal to the cause of compromise, and the number was growing rapidly. Horace Greeley himself later admitted that, if it had been submitted to a popular vote, the Crittenden Compromise would have carried “by the hundreds of thousands.”

The clamor for Crittenden’s amendments mirrored the erosion of support for Abraham Lincoln in the first few weeks after his election. Starting with his absurdly low 40% election figure, and using as a guide Henry Adams’ estimate of the December defections of his supporters in Congress—by one-third in the Senate, by perhaps two-thirds in the House—it is probable that, in the Secession Winter of 1860-1861, Lincoln’s support—his “approval rating,” in modern parlance—was no more than 25% nationwide, and that, even in the North, his support had dwindled to around 40%. This, indeed, was the estimate of the December 19, 1860, New York Herald. Half Lincoln’s 1,800,000 votes had been Whigs and 315,000 party-jumping Democrats, the Herald claimed. Half those Whigs and all the Democrats, it surmised, were indifferent or hostile to his anti-slavery, leaving barely 1,000,000—less than one-fourth the 4.7 million who voted in 1860—to support Lincoln in his stand on slavery. Lincoln’s woeful slide in popularity in the month after his election is further borne out by returns from Massachusetts, where, in the local elections of December, the Republicans’ 51% November majority slid to a 40% minority.

But there would be no opportunity for the huge anti-Lincoln, pro-compromise majority to express itself. No compromise plan was ever submitted to the people. Extremists from both sides, over-represented in Congress, thwarted it. Congressmen from the Deep South would refuse to consider a compromise even if it had been offered—for their constituents, the word “compromise” connoted dishonor, as in the “compromise” of a woman’s virtue. And in the North, there were enough stalwart Republicans to prevent any compromise from being offered in the first place. On December 22, the Crittenden Compromise was killed in committee. On January 16, Republican ultras defeated it again on the Senate floor, with the help of Deep South senators who refused to cast votes.

On the evening of December 20, South Carolina seceded, declaring, “The union is dissolved!” and citizens wild with delight lit every light in the city and poured into the streets to celebrate, with the sound of brass bands, clanging church bells, and one hundred roaring cannon ringing in their ears, amid bonfires, fireworks, and a military parade. Over the next six weeks, all six Deep South states, from Florida to Texas, followed South Carolina out of the Union. Overnight, the vital question became not whether a man was for or against slavery, but whether he was for or against secession. The sides were completely reshuffled. Extremists on both sides of the slavery question sought a separation; those in the middle wanted the Union preserved.

Lincoln was late to see the shift, tone deaf to the martial music that sounded in the angry Southern declarations. Lincoln in mid-December showed his inability to fathom the Southern sensitivity on the subject of slavery in a revealing letter to North Carolina congressman John A. Gilmer in which he said, “On the territorial question I am inflexible …. On that there is a difference between you and us; and it is the only substantial difference. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. For this neither has any just occasion to be angry with the other.” A week later Lincoln again discounted the explosiveness of this central question in a letter to Alex Stephens of Georgia: “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That, I suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” Lincoln showed a failure of imagination when he thus dismissed a world of Southern feeling on this crucial subject. Was the difference, for him, merely abstract? Lincoln showed himself to have temporarily lost his sure sense for the workings of the heart of the common man.

From December to February, the country was thrown into an uproar as state after state left the Union and seized the Federal customs houses, forts, mints, and arsenals on their soil. Lincoln could only watch in despair as the paralyzed Buchanan government did nothing to block the exodus. In January, the Illinois state legislature convened, and Lincoln moved from the governor’s office across the street to a dusty empty room over Smith’s store, where he wrestled alone with the Republic’s sins. What was to be done with the seceding states? What was to be done with the federal property in those states? How would Federal authority be extended into a region that did not recognize that authority? Should he use the military to coerce the South into returning? On these questions, as before, Lincoln kept silent.

During the weeks before his departure for Washington, while he grappled with these questions, he was assaulted by an army of office-seekers who descended in swarms and jammed every hotel room in Springfield, eager for spoils. It was a miserable and disgraceful invasion that so profoundly offended him that he was sick of office before he got into it, according to his law partner, William Herndon. At the same time, he had to meet for the first time with the leaders of his party and choose a Cabinet. All of this was necessary to unite a polyglot party that had years of practice in the role of The Opposition, but no experience in actually wielding power. Moreover, he had to write the most important inaugural address in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, so many threats had been made, so many rumors were in the air, that party leaders feared Lincoln would never live to be inaugurated. He watched the nation disintegrate as a result of his election, an unknown President-elect with views so profoundly unpopular that he dared not utter them before he took office.

Under the combined weight of responsibilities and threats no American, certainly no private citizen, had ever known, Lincoln’s soul passed into shadow. He began a “wilderness” period plagued by a melancholy so black and thick it would last through the rest of the Secession Winter. His friend W. H. L. Wallace wrote to his wife, “I have seen Mr. Lincoln two or three times since I have been here, but only for a moment & he is continually surrounded by a crowd of people. He has a world of responsibility & seems to feel it & to be oppressed by it. He looks care worn & more haggard & stooped than I ever saw him.” Another friend who saw him then reported, “Not only was the old-time zest lacking, but in its place was a gloom and despondency.” It was during this time that he saw a vision in a mirror of two Lincolns—one alive, one dead. He took it to mean that he would not survive his presidency.