Annotation
[1] AD, NAuE. See Bancroft, Life of William H. Seward (1900) II, 10. See letter to Trumbull, December 21, infra, for circumstances under which the resolutions were composed. Seward wrote on December 26 that on December 24 he had offered first to the Republican members of the Committee of Thirteen, and afterwards the whole Committee, `` . . . three propositions which seemed to me to cover the ground of the suggestion made by you through Mr Weed as I understood it. First. That the constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states. This was accepted. Second. That the Fugitive slave law should be amended by granting a jury trial to the fugitive. . . . '' This was amended so as to name the jury from the state which the fugitive had fled, and was voted down by the Republicans. The third resolution --- that Congress should recommend that the states revise legislation concerning persons recently resident in the state and repeal all in conflict with the constitution --- was rejected. At another meeting on December 26, Seward continued, he had offered a fourth proposition to the effect that Congress should pass a law to prevent invasion of a state, which was amended and rejected. Whereupon the Republican members of the committee, together with Trumbull and Fessenden, met to consider Lincoln's resolutions: ``While we think the ground has already been covered we find that in the form you give it it would divide our friends not only in the Committee but in Congress, a portion being unwilling to give up their old opinion that the duty of executing the constitutional provisions concerning fugitives from service belongs to the States, and not at all to Congress. But we shall confer --- and act wisely as we can.'' (DLC-RTL).