The failure of the Virginia Compromise is one more proof that a great
deal of vital history never gets into words until after it is over.
During the second half of March, Unionists and Secessionists in the
Virginia Convention debated with deep emotion this searching new
proposal. The Unionists had a fatal weakness in their position. This was
the feature of the situation that had not hitherto been put into words.
Lincoln had not been accurate when he said that the slavery question
was "the only substantial dispute." He had taken for granted that the
Southern opposition to nationalism was not a real thing,--a mere device
of the politicians to work up excitement. All the compromises he was
ready to offer were addressed to that part of the South which was
seeking to make an issue on slavery. They had little meaning for that
other and more numerous part in whose thinking slavery was an incident.
For this other South, the ideas which Lincoln as late as the middle of
March did not bring into play were the whole story. Lincoln, willing to
give all sorts of guarantees for the noninterference with slavery, would
not give a single guarantee supporting the idea of State sovereignty
against the idea of the sovereign power of the national Union. The
Virginians, willing to go great lengths in making concessions with
regard to slavery, would not go one inch in the way of admitting that
their State was not a sovereign power included in the American Union
of its own free will, and not the legitimate subject of any sort of
coercion.

The Virginia Compromise was really a profound new complication. The very
care with which it divided the issue of nationality from the issue
of slavery was a storm signal. For a thoroughgoing nationalist like
Lincoln, deep perplexities lay hidden in this full disclosure of the
issue that was vital to the moderate South. Lincoln's shifting of his