XIII. ECLIPSE

Lincoln's ultimatum of December twentieth contained three proposals that
might be made to the Southern leaders:

That the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law which hitherto had been
left to State authorities should be taken over by Congress and supported
by the Republicans.

That the Republicans to the extent of their power should work for the
repeal of all those "Personal Liberty Laws" which had been established
in certain Northern States to defeat the operation of the Fugitive Slave
Law.

That the Federal Union must be preserved.(1)

In presenting these proposals along with a refusal to consider the
Crittenden Compromise, Seward tampered with their clear-cut form.
Fearful of the effect on the extremists of the Republican group, he
withheld Lincoln's unconditional promise to maintain the Fugitive Slave
Law and instead of pledging his party to the repeal of Personal Liberty
Laws he promised only to have Congress request the States to repeal
them. He suppressed altogether the assertion that the Union must be
preserved.(2) About the same time, in a public speech, he said he was
not going to be "humbugged" by the bogy of secession, and gave his
fatuous promise that all the trouble would be ended inside ninety days.
For all his brilliancy of a sort, he was spiritually obtuse. On him,
as on Douglas, Fate had lavished opportunities to see life as it is, to
understand the motives of men; but it could not make him use them. He
was incorrigibly cynical. He could not divest himself of the idea that