Southern Union governor.[35] Crittenden's changing attitude
reveals the growing peril, and the growing reliance on Webster's
and Clay's plans. By April, Crittenden recognized that "the Union
is endangered", "the case . . . rises above ordinary rules",
"circumstances have rather changed". He reluctantly swung from
Taylor's plan of dealing with California alone, to the Clay and
Webster idea of settling the "whole controversy".[36]
Representative Morehead wrote Crittenden, "The extreme Southern
gentlemen would secretly deplore the settlement of this question.
The magnificence of a Southern Confederacy . . . is a dazzling
allurement." Clay like Webster, saw "the alternative, civil
war".[37]


[35] Coleman, Crittenden, I. 333, 350.

[36] Clayton MSS., Apr. 6; cf. Coleman, Crittenden, I. 369.

[37] Smith, History of Slavery, 1. 121; Clay, Oct., 1851, letter,
in Curtis, Webster, II, 584-585.


In North Carolina, the majority appear to have been loyal to the
Union; but the extremists--typified by Clingman, the public
meeting at Wilmington, and the newspapers like the Wilmington
Courier--reveal the presence of a dangerously aggressive body
"with a settled determination to dissolve the Union" and frankly
"calculating the advantages of a Southern Confederacy." Southern
observers in this state reported that "the repeal of the Fugitive
Slave Law or the abolition of slavery in the District will