In this spirit Douglas welcomed from the South the recital of special grievances.  “Give us each charge and each specification....  I hold that there is no grievance growing out of a nonfulfillment of constitutional obligations, which cannot be remedied under the Constitution and within the Union."[901] And when the Personal Liberty Acts of Northern States were cited as a long-standing grievance, he heartily denounced them as in direct violation of the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.  At the same time he contended that these acts existed generally in the States to which few fugitives ever fled, and that the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced nineteen out of twenty times.  It was the twentieth case that was published abroad through the press, misleading the South.  In fact, the present excitement was, to his mind, due to the inability of the extremes of North and South to understand each other.  “Those of us that live upon the border, and have commercial intercourse and social relations across the line, can live in peace with each other.”  If the border slave States and the border free States could arbitrate the question of slavery, the Union would last forever.[902]

Arbitration and compromise—­these were the words with which the venerable Crittenden of Kentucky, successor to Clay, now endeavored to rally Union-loving men.  He was seconded by his colleague, Senator Powell, who had already moved the appointment of a special committee of thirteen, to consider the grievances between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.  Douglas put himself unreservedly at the service of the party of compromise.  It seemed, for the moment, as though the history of the year 1850 were to be repeated.  Now, as then, the initiative was taken by a senator from the border-State of Kentucky.  Again a committee of thirteen was to prepare measures of adjustment.  The composition of the committee was such as to give promise of a settlement, if any were possible.  Seward, Collamer, Wade, Doolittle, and Grimes, were the Republican members; Douglas, Rice, and Bigler represented the Democracy of the North.  Davis and Toombs represented the Gulf States; Powell, Crittenden, and Hunter, the border slave States.[903]

On the 22d of December, the committee took under consideration the Crittenden resolutions, which proposed six amendments to the Constitution and four joint resolutions.  The crucial point was the first amendment, which would restore the Missouri Compromise line “in all the territory of the United States now held, or hereafter acquired.”  Could this disposition of the vexing territorial question have been agreed upon, the other features of the compromise would probably have commanded assent.  But this and all the other proposed amendments were defeated by the adverse vote of the Republican members of the committee.[904]