The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1861-02-14
The Peace Congress.

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Great hopes are entertained that the Peace
Congress now in session at Washington,
will be able to unraYel the difficulties in
which the government seems entangled, and
that they will devise way by which quiet
may be restored to the country. The Con-
gress is composed of most eminent men,
and if there is such a thing as harmonizing
and tranquilizing the troubled elements,
they will be likely to suggest plan.
The Cotton States have, in advance, utter
ly repudiated the Peace Congress, boosted
that their Government is fairly set in mo-
ton, and that they will hear to no terms of
compromise or Cancellation. So far as they
are concerned, the Congress will accom-
plish nothing. The only good that it can
possibly exert, is to devise some basis
of settlement upon which the free states
and border slave states can tremendously
agree. This will be a delicate point. A large
number of the prominent men of the border
slave states, who avow themselves advocates
for the Union, still insist on the adoption
of the Crittenden resolutions. [The Repub-
licans, while they manifest disposition to
do anything to conciliate and strengthen
the Union men in the Southern States,
know they cannot endorse the Crittenden
propositions without total abando nment
of the principles for which they contended
in the last canvass. Some, it cannot be de-
MED, are opposed to any compromise what
ever. They say they have not wronged the
South in any particular, do not intend
doing so, and an attempt to force them to
endorse a principle through fear, that they
would not concede as a principle of justice,
is a subvcrsiou of the very foundations of
popular government. These insist
that Mr.. Lincoln must first be in
augurated; his administration allow
cd to take quiet possession of the
Government and if their party,
after assuming the reins of govern
ment, violates any of the constitutional
rights of the South. the people will sweep
it from power. These endorse Senator
Chase's terse maxim, " Inauguration first,
and adjustment afterwards" But there are
other Republicans, and among them num-
beers whom Southern men have been accus-
toned to denounce as most uucompromis-
ing abolitionists, who are willing to make
ncessions-important ones, too, for the
sake of peace. These are for the Union
even at the sacrifice of party pride and con-
sistency.
The speeches of Congressman from the
border slave states, last week, and the Vir-
ginia and Tennessee elections, and the action
of the Kentucky legislature, materially
strengthened the hopes of Union men, AND
persuaded them that the dead point Of
danger was passed. We cannot so regard
it. A large portion of the nominal Union
men elected to the Virginia Convention, Sc
cured their election on the ground that il
the Republicans did not concede the Critten.
den resolutions, or something similar they
would vote for Virginia to secede from the
Union. The defeat of John Minor Bolts
who was emphatically for the Union a,
it is-in Richmond, while the other two
Union candidates were elected, is ominously
significant. If Virginia makes the adoption
of the Crittenden plan of adjustment as the
condition of her stay in the Union, she
will undoubtedly go out. That compro
mise will not be adopted.
Tennessee-thanks to that noble ole
Roman, Andy Johnson-talks differently
Her people say they are satisfied with the
Union and are unwilling to be dragged out
of it. Kentucky, we doubt not, when the
time comes for her people to speak, will talk
in similar strains
There is one great and almost insuperabIe
difficulty with which the Peace Commission
ers have to contend. This is as to the right
of secession. A compromise now, is an &C.
acknowledgement of this right If one State
has q right TO secede because a compromise
is not agreed to, another State has the right
to secede if it is agreed to, and thus we are
plunged into anarchy at once The right
to secede cannot be conceded, and to insis:
on any particular compromise-by using
threats of secession-is assuming a position
hostile to the integrity and permanently of
the Government. $50 serious will the diff
Guilty prove, that we doubt whether the
Commissioners will come to any conclusion
other than to merely recommend a national
convention for the settlement of the diff
culties. 1t will then adjourn, leaving the
people the consolation of knowing they have
invested in one of those operations that was
very expensive without being at all pro6ta-
BILE.
DRowNED.-Rev Mr. Mathew, of Wash
ington. Davies county, an agent of the
American Tract Society, was drowned on
Monday in creek a mile or two above
Vineennes. The Reverend gentleman I'M
dertool to ford the creek with II horse and
buggy, but the water at the fording place